Apple Reportedly Working On VR And AR Technology Apple has reportedly been going on a hiring spree in the virtual reality market with their acquisition of PrimeSense.
By tbreak •
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During this week's earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook described virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) as "cool and with interesting applications;" however, if recent rumors are to be believed, he might have some background to his statement.
According to a recent report from Financial Times, Apple has been prototyping VR headsets in the past under Steve Jobs in the mid-2000s, but the project was abandoned once the technology was found to be immature. Now, with new acquisitions and a dedicated VR team, there might be a new focus.
Apple has reportedly been going on a hiring spree in the virtual reality market with their acquisition of PrimeSense. The VR/AR research unit at Apple is rumored to have hundreds of staff from multiple previous acquisitions, which also include employees from Microsoft's HoloLens team as well as Lytro. Apple has also acquired Flyby Media, a company that worked with Google in developing some of the 3D positioning software for Project Tango. Apple has also hired Doug Bowman, a top virtual and augmented reality researcher, to help expedite the efforts for the platform.
Although Apple's Jony Ive told The New Yorker that the face was the wrong place to put technology, Apple is reportedly hiring hardware engineers as well to work on display and projection systems for VR environments. The report further claims that Apple will be building out the secret VR/AR team at the company.
This article was originally published on tbreak and has been reposted on Entrepreneur Middle East based on a mutual agreement between the websites.
