Samsung may be among the largest marketing machines behind the virtual reality push occurring in the tech and gaming sectors. As the company pairs its success in the smartphone market with its new virtual reality enabling headset, Samsung may have the largest lead per product of any its competitors.
With that being said, Samsung isn’t leaving any reality stone unturned as it looks to be a part of the augmented reality conversation that is predominantly controlled by Magic Leap’s secret project and Microsoft’s HoloLens headset.
According to a report from digitaltrends, Samsung appears to be working on an augmented reality headset similar in fashion to Microsoft’s HoloLens.
During a Virtual Reality Summit in Sa Diego, Samsung VP Dr. Sung-Hoon Hong revealed that the company’s AR headset as such:
“The next step in the Pokémon Go AR experience, where players would see a Pokémon in a tree, and then move the leaves and branches aside to get to it. He described this as the third stage of AR technology, where the real world blends into the virtual, and changes it in real time.”
Furthermore, Samsung plans to show off some sort of prototype hardware at Mobile World Congress February 2017. While Samsung is arguably a talent in hardware manufacturing the company’s position among software is questionable for some. Hong was light on the software layer that would string its augmented reality experience together.
With Google going all in on virtual reality with its Daydream operating system, it seems Samsung will have to come up with its own augmented reality software or opt to use feature growing HoloLens platform.
Whatever the outcome, it’s interesting to a player such as Samsung devoting resources into this field. It may be only a matter of time before other larger names see the augmented blood in the water and begin to circle as well.
