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Apple on Friday confirmed reports that it has acquired NextVR, a virtual reality company that specializes in broadcasting live events in the virtual reality (VR) format.
NextVR was known for its previous agreements with the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, Live Nation, Fox Sports, International Champions Cup, as well as with various artists to broadcast sporting events and concerts through its VR platform.
When asked to comment, Apple simply referred to a CNBC acquisition report, where it said: “Apple buys smaller tech companies from time to time, and we generally don’t discuss our purpose or plans.”
Meanwhile, the NextVR website was updated with a note saying, “We are headed in a new direction.”
“Thank you to our partners and fans around the world for the role they played in building this incredible platform for sports, music and entertainment experiences in Virtual Reality.”
Before the acquisition, Apple had told ZDNet’s sister publication CNET that it had plans to launch augmented reality (AR) and VR headsets sometime later this year.
Apple said that at the time, the headphones would have an 8K screen for each eye, a higher resolution than today’s best TVs, and would not be tethered from a computer or smartphone.
As Apple continues to work on an AR / VR offering, Microsoft and Facebook have already released their own VR headsets, HoloLens and Oculus, respectively.
Despite the AR / VR investment from these tech companies, adoption of the technology has been slow, with worldwide shipments of VR headsets totaling just 5.7 million last year. In comparison, more than 1.3 billion smartphones were shipped during the same period.
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