Close on the heels of buying Magic Pony Technology, Twitter TWTR has now brought on board, Alessandro Sabatelli to boost its AR/VR efforts.
Sabatelli worked with Apple AAPL for a decade before quitting the company last year to set up his own VR software firm, IXOMOXI.
Sabatelli will spearhead Twitter’s new AR/VR division formed within Twitter Cortex, which is a group of data and research scientists and software engineers committed to “developing state-of-the-art machine learning capabilities to refine and transform Twitter products”.
Augmented Reality/Virtual reality is the next big technological innovation along with AI technology. As a result, all tech giants right from Alphabet GOOGL, Apple, Microsoft Corp. to Facebook FB, have stepped up their AR/VR efforts to gain ground in this nascent but seen as an extremely lucrative market. According to a 2014–2018 report from KZero, a U.K.-based consulting and research firm that focuses on virtual reality, the market will grow exponentially and could be worth $5.2 billion by 2018.
Currently, headsets have been dominating VR markets. Facebook is a leading name with Oculus Rift. Facebook acquired Oculus a couple of years back to accelerate its VR efforts. Priced at $599, Rift is an expensive headset, which has taken gaming to the 3D world. Then there is Sony’s Playstation VR headset with a price tag of $399, which is yet to make its debut. We have HTC’s Vive headsets in the market. However, both Facebook and HTC have hit roadblocks while shipping these headsets. Microsoft and Alphabet are also contenders in the market, with HoloLens and Google Glass, respectively.
However, it is unlikely that Twitter will foray into the headsets market. Analysts opine that Twitter’s efforts are directed towards enhancing the quality of VR and AR experiences especially for video content. Recently, Twitter started allowing users to post longer videos of 140 seconds as against the 30 seconds time limit earlier. Twitter has also improved the browsing experience to enable users find videos easily on both Vine and Twitter platforms.
At present, Twitter carries a Zacks Rank #3(Hold).
Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >>
Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report
Be the first to comment