The “core requirements” at Imax of launching a “location-based” virtual-reality experience for consumers “line up nicely” with its “core skill sets,” CEO Richard Gelfond said on a Thursday earnings call. The Imax brand is “synonymous with immersive experiences,” Gelfond said. Since announcing its VR strategy (see 1608310001), Imax has met with “strong interest for partnership content deals and many other opportunities,” he said. “Unlike many other VR offerings out there, which are targeting the at-home experience, we’re focused on the location-based offering, which has the ability to provide a broader array of high quality, more immersive content experiences with a social element out of the home.” The company’s plan remains firm to open its first “pilot” Imax VR Centers in Los Angeles and the U.K. this year, he said. Imax then will “test the concept and, assuming this concept works, embark on a more aggressive rollout schedule,” he said. Each center will use several VR “pods” that will allow “multiple people to engage in the experience,” and enjoy it with friends, he said. Though “I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves, we continue to be very excited about this initiative,” he said. “I look forward to sharing more about our business after we get our pilot sites up and running. I want to underline the word pilot. This is a test. We are not investing a lot of money at this time in the initiative. We are doing a test. If the test works, we will go forward.”
Aggressive promotional activity from smartphone vendors in virtual reality and the launch of “premium smartphone VR solutions” will help drive the installed base of VR headsets to 81 million in 2020, from 4 million in 2015, IHS Markit reported Thursday. The researcher sees consumer spending on VR headsets reaching $7.9 billion in 2020 and spending on VR entertainment hitting $3.3 billion, it said. “While the VR headset installed base will escalate significantly to 81 million by 2020, we predict that expensive, higher-end headsets will dominate content monetization.” It forecasts a “polarization” in the VR market between lower-volume premium VR headsets, “which will have strong paid content conversion rates, and higher-volume cheaper smartphone VR headsets, which will monetize content at a lower rate.”
Proliferation of augmented reality and virtual reality applications and services like Pokemon Go is sparking significant legal and regulatory issues about privacy, cybersecurity, e-commerce, free expression, intellectual property and safety, said R Street Technology Policy Fellow Anne Hobson in a paper. Privacy advocates and lawmakers like Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., raised concerns with Pokemon Go creator Niantic over data collected from users and how it's being used (see 1607150014, 1607250009 and 1609010083). In privacy, Hobson wrote Thursday, passive data collection, facial recognition and targeted advertising are concerns. She said some state laws go further than federal rules and "present a more proximate threat" to AR and VR companies. Besides concerns with hacking, data breaches and information sharing requirements for AR and VR companies, she cited potential issues with data localization and the intersection of AR with IoT.
For those watching for the emergence of virtual reality and experienced the “rise and fall” of 3D video, “it’s natural to feel uncertainty about both where things are with VR today, and where they might be heading,” said an Interactive Ad Bureau report Monday on VR’s potential as an advertising medium. IAB's report views 2016 as a “watershed year” for VR because the technology is “finally achieving mass scale,” as VR experiences “are expanding beyond the hardcore gaming community and into everyday mobile and desktop browsers via 360 video,” it said. But the future of VR “is still very much unknown,” it said. “Existing hurdles may fall, but new ones may arise,” it said. “VR could scale faster than ever, or fade into flash-in-the-pan obscurity. That said, the predictions of those involved in VR today trend positively.” Corporate “high-level views” of VR indicate companies will pour “continued investment, development, and testing” resources into VR technology over the next two years,” the report said. “It’s expected that 24 months from now, we’ll have a much better understanding of the four or five key use cases around how and why consumers will use VR, versus what they do on their phones, iPads, TVs, and everything else.” VR’s potential for immersive storytelling, shopping and product demos are among the technology’s strong suits, said the report, based on interviews with executives at AOL, Google, The New York Times and other companies active in VR. A danger is that there’s also an “extraordinary level of hype” surrounding VR that may unnecessarily raise consumers’ expectations, making it harder for companies to wow the public with new VR products and services, it said.
Lack of compelling content and user-experience “issues” are still among the “main impediments” to the mainstream consumer adoption of virtual-reality and augmented-reality products and services, said a Perkins Coie survey report Monday. The law firm teamed with Upload, which runs a San Francisco “collective” dedicated to helping VR and AR startups get off the ground, to canvass 653 startup founders, tech company executives and investors. Thirty-seven percent cited inadequate content offerings as the most significant “obstacle” blocking VR and AR adoption, the report said. “Just as content was the fuel that launched many successful technology products, our respondents clearly believe that high-quality and robust content is key to moving the AR/VR industry forward.” Thirty-eight percent said they see “bulky hardware and technical glitches” as the top industry impediments, the report said. “Mobile VR taps into the continued proliferation of mobile devices to combat some of the barriers identified in the survey related to cost and the need for bulky equipment.”
SES will team with Berlin's Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute to demo a “groundbreaking R&D project” at the IBC show by transmitting a 10K x 2K “panoramic video signal” via satellite to multiple devices at the SES stand, SES said in a Monday announcement. The signal, beamed from SES’s Astra satellite at 19.2 degrees east, will be viewable on an Ultra HD display as well as on several virtual reality headsets, SES said. “The viewer can choose a viewing angle, zoom in and out, turn the picture on the TV display using a simple remote control or choose to wear a VR headset, where the video signal is delivered simultaneously.” Footage shot on an OmniCam-360 camera and shown in the demo will provide a “first glimpse” of what a future 360-degree VR video image “would look like,” it said. “For the first time, it allows the viewer a truly immersive experience of being part of a virtual event, whether it is sports, concerts or other live shows.” IBC’s exhibit floor opens Friday in Amsterdam for a six-day run.
A Samsung Gear VR virtual reality headset, U.S. version, was an Amazon Gold Box Deal of the Day Wednesday, selling new for $59 with warranty. The listing showed a black with white version. Best Buy was selling what looked like the same color for $64 Wednesday but the blue-black version at Best Buy had a $99 tag. The Amazon listing had 1,843 customer reviews with a 4.2 star average and more than 1,000 answered questions. A sampling of answered questions covered whether it was a stand-alone unit (no, phone required), compatibility with Samsung phones and phablets, whether the headset would work with glasses (yes), available content and whether a controller is required (for some games). Used versions were selling from $40 and refurbished models for $44 at Amazon.
NextVR will team with Fox Sports to broadcast the opening match of the Bundesliga soccer league’s 2016-17 season in live virtual reality, the companies said in a Monday announcement. The match, which pits Bayern München against Werder Bremen, is scheduled for 8:30 p.m. Munich time (2:30 p.m. EDT) Friday. It's the first time the Bundesliga league will broadcast live to an international audience in VR, they said. Viewers will have the ability to watch a produced feed with cameras placed in the stands, along the sidelines, midfield and behind the goal, they said. The broadcast will be available for free through the Fox Sports portal on the NextVR platform viewable on Samsung Gear VR headsets, they said.
IDC expanded its forecast for the augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) market, now projecting it will grow from $5.2 billion this year to more than $162 billion in 2020, said an IDC news release Monday. With smartphones powering inexpensive VR headsets, the consumer market is primed for new paid and user-generated content-driven experiences, and recent developments show AR headsets will have an impact in healthcare, education, logistics and manufacturing, said IDC. "The rise of new, less expensive hardware will put virtual and augmented reality technology within the grasp of a growing number of companies and individuals," said IDC analyst Tom Mainelli. IDC expects developers to create new experiences for AR and VR devices that will “fundamentally change the way many of us do work." Hardware sales will generate more than half of worldwide AR/VR revenue during the forecast period, and software revenue will get off to a quick start and then be overtaken by services revenue as logistics and manufacturing call for enterprise-class support, IDC said. Revenue for VR systems, including viewers, software, consulting services and systems integration services, is forecast to be bigger than AR-related revenue in 2016 and 2017, due to consumer uptake of games and paid content, IDC said. After 2017, AR revenue will surge ahead, hitting critical mass in healthcare delivery and product design and management-related use cases, it said.
The New York Times Co. acquired Fake Love, a design agency specializing in live experiences and virtual and mixed reality, the publisher said in a news release Friday. The all-cash transaction, which closed Thursday, comes six months after the Times acquired social media marketing agency HelloSociety. No terms were disclosed.