News: Resolution Games Scores $7.5M in Funding Round Backed by Google, Unity Founder, & Others
Fresh off shipping an augmented reality game for Magic Leap, Resolution Games has farmed another $7.5 million in funding through a Series B round.
Fresh off shipping an augmented reality game for Magic Leap, Resolution Games has farmed another $7.5 million in funding through a Series B round.
The long, long, loooong wait finally ended this week for the augmented reality community as the Magic Leap One was finally released. The Florida-based company has loomed over the industry for years promising something big, and now the AR cat is finally out of the bag. Now we get to see if it will live up to expectations, but early reviews are a bit skeptical.
As it prepares to ship its first product by the end of the summer, Magic Leap has managed to impress yet another high-profile investor in telecommunications giant AT&T.
Another branding team has stepped up to the bar to order a tall glass of augmented reality for its marketing campaign, this time through a mobile app for Rémy Martin VSOP Limited Edition cognac.
Consumers are chomping at the bit for augmented reality smartglasses from Cupertino's finest, but one market analyst is saying not so fast, Apple fans. Meanwhile, automotive AR is gaining speed, with the latest milestone coming courtesy of a major investment in waveguides by Continental. And although mobile AR apps have already arrived, retailer Target is taking a different approach. So why is Target tinkering with web-based AR? Answers below...
The augmented reality business was all about audiences this week. Vuzix looked for an audience with the Supreme Court of New York regarding a defamation lawsuit against an investor. Magic Leap held an audience with royalty, showing off the Magic Leap One in a rare public appearance. And Snapchat wanted to remind its consumer audience of all the things its camera can do.
The Microsoft HoloLens has a fairly passionate, yet relatively small group of users pushing the developer-centric device forward, mostly spreading the word about the device through word of mouth and meetups. But this weekend, during the annual NBA All-Star festivities, we got a look at how Microsoft may be planning to market the device if it ever goes truly mainstream.
In another move that pushes Meta 2 toward becoming a legitimate workplace tool, Meta Company has partnered with Dassault Systèmes to bring augmented reality support to the latter's Solidworks 3D CAD software.
It would be difficult to discuss the business of augmented reality without acknowledging the annual tech meat market of CES.
In the midst of outlining plans to release Pokémon Go in China and debut its new Harry Potter game during the back half of 2018, Niantic CEO John Hanke turned to the dark arts by taking a swipe at the company's AR gaming competition.
With an eye toward future iPhone X-focused augmented reality functions, Apple's new investment in one of its components vendors will increase production capacity for the technology behind its TrueDepth camera, but could also apply to its future AR ambitions.
Earlier this year at WWDC, Apple made a big show of featuring augmented reality as a central part of iOS moving forward. But since then, other than comments from the company's CEO, Tim Cook, we haven't seen much direct promotion of augmented reality from the company. Until now.
According to Digi-Capital, investors poured $1.8 billion into augmented and virtual reality companies over the last 12 months, including $300 million in the third quarter. These investments are not made without a means to monetize products and services.
Millions of dollars continue to pour into the Chinese driverless market. Now, according to research firm CB Insights, $929 million have been invested in the first quarter of this year.
Baidu signed a cooperation agreement on June 7, the first day of the CES Asia conference, with multiple companies in the autonomous vehicles industry. The companies listed in the press release include Desay SV, United Automotive Electronics, and Hangsheng Electronics, as well as possibly additional auto manufacturers. Baidu plans to "jointly develop" upcoming intelligent driving production plans.
Over the past week, we are seeing more companies capitalizing on services leveraging augmented reality. One company secured funding to expand their service, while two other companies grow its own services through acquisition.
This week's Brief Reality is led by a pair of stories with an eye to the future of the augmented reality industry, first in terms of standards for the industry, then with regards to its future applications in the automotive realm. Finally, one company looks to boost its future sales with an executive hire.
This week in Market Reality, we see two companies capitalizing on technologies that contribute to augmented reality platforms. In addition, industry mainstays Vuzix and DAQRI have business news of their own to report.
The first augmented reality hardware and software functional requirements guidelines have been released today by UI LABS and the Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance (AREA).
Sony has upped the ante for the promotion of Smurfs: The Lost Village, which was released on April 7 in the US, with a mixed reality experience via Microsoft's HoloLens.
Udacity, the online education startup that set out to train a school of self-driving car engineers, is now spinning off into its own autonomous tech company called Voyage.
Nokia, the Finnish telecommunications company, is about to shake things up a bit after its networks sales in the final quarter of last year declined 14% compared to sales in 2015.
All you paying Spotify users are about to get another exclusive privilege besides getting out of all those annoying "Ever wonder what it would be like to have Spotify premium?" ads. The Sweden-based company is looking to lower the royalty fees they have to pay to major record labels for their music, by compromising on their policy that all their music be free to paying and nonpaying users. Spotify would for a limited time restrict access on major album releases to their paying subscribers.
This year's SXSW festival had a plethora of news and discussion about autonomous cars, but perhaps none was more exciting than the NIO EP9. The car was first shown off in November in London when it ran the Nürburgring Nordschleife track in record time.
Earlier this week, a mysterious tweet appeared on the HTC Twitter account of a picture containing the letter "U" topped with a tiny "for" and the date "01.12.2017" at the bottom. It is a pretty solid teaser, but for a company that has had a solid year with their Vive virtual reality headset, and all of the other technological appendages they have, it seems a bit ominous for them.
The still-unfolding story of China's Nreal augmented reality startup continues to develop, with each turn uncovering another unexpected wrinkle.
While the big names in augmented reality demonstrated the breadth of opportunities in the industry's landscape this week, one new startup showed off what is possible further in the future.
While Elon Musk is in Los Angeles showing off the future of personal transport via the Cybertruck, another, unaffiliated group is taking one of his most popular ideas to market, with augmented reality as a key part of the plan.
In a stunning end-of-year twist to the Magic Leap versus Nreal legal saga, the China-based startup is now filing a motion against Magic Leap.
The week in AR business news started out with a bang with two bombshell reports that cast a shadow on the AR industry as a whole.
While Magic Leap doesn't yet have a consumer edition of the Magic Leap One, that hasn't stopped AT&T from building apps for mainstream audiences for the headset.
The augmented reality space is brutal, and that means shifting directions quickly to meet whatever need the market demands.
While Modiface, YouCam, and others have been playing in the virtual make-up marketing pool for a while, here comes Google ready to splash down with a cannonball.
The research team from Nvidia is returning to SIGGRAPH, an annual hotbed of innovation, with two new advancements in augmented reality displays.
A new profile on Apple's exiting design chief Jony Ive, the man behind many of the company's most successful products, paints a fuller picture of what led to his departure.
The partnership between Magic Leap and leading South Korean wireless carrier SK Telecom took on an added importance earlier this week as the company unveiled the world's first nationwide 5G network.
Every year, fans of Irish culture, as well as those looking to celebrate their own culture, come together on St. Patrick's Day, March 17.
Reading the augmented reality news lately has felt a bit like reading a John Grisham novel, as the business side of things has dripped with legal drama.
The last time we heard from Meta, the makers of the Meta 2 augmented reality headset, things looked pretty bleak. Now, as several new facts have come to light, we have confirmation regarding the beleaguered company's fate: Meta is done.
Mobile augmented reality pioneer Blippar has now completed its fall from hopeful AR startup to the immersive computing history books.