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Oculus VR News | March 28, 2024

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Oculus VR Plans to Emulate Android as Model for Expansion

Oculus VR Plans to Emulate Android as Model for Expansion

Image courtesy of: Oculus

FRΛNK R.

Oculus VR has big plans to bring virtual reality to the masses. After being acquired by Facebook back in March for $2 billion, the company has hired some of the best talents in the industry, including a recent acquisition of Carbon Design Group, the product engineering team responsible for designing the Xbox 360 gaming controller. And even though Oculus has an abundant amount of resources at its disposal, it may take more help to achieve its ambitious goal of 1 billion people using virtual reality.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe revealed the company plans to partner with multiple hardware manufacturers to help push its virtual reality platform to consumers on a massive scale. Similar to Google’s Android successful business model, this strategic licensing approach would allow for rapid expansion and adoption of its VR technology onto as many devices as possible. However, Iribe did not mention if Oculus would make its Rift technology open source, as Google did with its Android mobile platform.

“If we do want to get a billion people on virtual reality, which is our goal, we’re not going to sell 1 billion pairs of glasses ourselves,” Iribe said. “We are openly talking to any kind of partner that wants to jump into VR, and there’s a lot of interest right now.”

A report last month suggests Oculus may already have a collaborative partnership with Samsung to develop its own mobile VR headset device. As part of the deal, Oculus reportedly offered Samsung early access to its mobile software development kit (SDK), in exchange to gain early access to Samsung’s next-generation OLED displays to use in its own Oculus Rift headset.

While no official announcements have been made regarding other potential hardware partners, it is likely Oculus may hold off from establishing partnerships until after the release of its first consumer version Oculus Rift headset hits the market. “We need to get it right before we engage and work with other people,” Iribe said.