As reported by Bloomberg.com this week, Apple is putting together an ambitious team of hundreds of engineers and respected AR executives to work on Apple’s AR project. What exactly this will produce is not yet clear but it is likely to focus more on Augmented Reality rather than Virtual Reality.
Apple has recruited some of the top people in the industry with Mike Rockwell, previous the lead of hardware and new technologies at Dolby, running the AR team which include Fletcher Rothkopf, who earlier helped to lead the Apple Watch team, and Tomlinson Holman, the THX creator behind the audio standard used by Lucas film.
Apple has also recruited people from the wearable hardware industry to 3d video production experts including employees from Weta Digital, the special effects company that worked on Avatar and King Kong etc.
On top of this, there has been several acquisitions made by Apple which includes:
- Metaio, AR software developers
- FlyBy Media, AR related camera software
There are also rumours that Apple is in talks with Magic Leap, a secretive AR technology company.
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, has talked up AR as the next game-changer for the industry but he said in 2016 that few people would like to be “enclosed in something”. Hence the believe that Apple is focusing on Augmented Reality instead of the more talked about Virtual Reality.
It is also clear that they have no choice than to launch an Apple VR or AR product to move with the times. Bloomberg also reports that the global market for AR products will reach $165 billion by 2024 and it would be surprising if Apple wouldn’t want a slice of this market.
Put all this together and it becomes clear that Apple is ambitiously preparing for a big VR or AR product launch in the coming years.
Further details in the original Bloomberg article.