Previously, it was talked that Apple may have more interest in AR, but from recent reports, it founds that Virtual Reality is the next computing platform of Apple. Now Apple confirmed that it has brought the VR event startup NextVR, and it was also confirmed by NextVR’s website that the company is moving towards a new direction after acquiring by Apple.
It’s very surprising for many of us because a few days back Apple was very interested in mobile AR, and avoiding interest in the VR world as they leave that domain fully in Facebook’s hands. In last year, the information reported that Apple informed its employees that the company may acquire a device in 2022 that will be a combination of both AR and VR abilities such similar to an Oculus Quest. This latest acquisition by Apple shows that Apple has deeper plans to acquire VR technology than they previously indicated.
From the source, it was found that the NextVR deal price with Apple was around $100 million, this price is not up to the mark of investors of NextVR as they collectively invest $115 million in the company, but this deal delivers the broader shape to VR content market at the same moment. In this case, Apple needs to pay for something they don’t even think about. The biggest strength of NextVR was its partnership with various sports leagues. But most probably, Apple doesn’t care about keeping these partnerships active, on the other side, NextVR tech stack for event VR content widely could predict a future picture of Apple content maneuvering.
With NextVR, Apple can influence the full view of existing VR headsets, provide the 3D environment, and enhance user’s experience. No doubt, AR can also experience all these, but there are no such AR headsets that influence this type of content and still, there is no hope from AR side. The current AR devices aren’t optimized for VR, but Apple might be ready to avoid this assumption.
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To enhance its Oculus hardware, Facebook worked hard for many years to develop a meaningful network for virtual reality content and Apple also needs to put a similar effort in AR. Whenever Apple entered in the field of AR, they may get themselves in a dead sector where very little non-enterprise development works. But it is expected that Apple comes with an ambitious AR release with the AR launch content.
ARKit was the biggest failure of Apple this far and it showed its inability in highlighting the platform’s potential on mobile devices. But now the company is more conventional towards showing first-party use cases. They also reveal their downloadable 3D measurement app.
Apple’s recent investment in NextVR shows that virtual reality is the safer place to invest in the meantime and it is easier to develop better virtual reality content and developers also have end-to-end experiences. The acquisition of NextVR gives Apple access to a smooth pipeline to a broader body of VR content that enhances the experience of mixed reality devices. The official from Apple said that they are highly excited about AR’s potential but the virtual reality’s acquisition is a growing long-term strategy.
