Category: foxconn

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Foxconn to Invest $100m in XRSPACE’s Metaverse Vision

Hon Hai Technology Group – better known as Foxconn – one of the largest technology manufacturers on the planet has announced a new partnership with XRSPACE, the virtual reality (VR) company founded by former CEO and co-founder of HTC, Peter Chou. The agreement will see Foxconn invest a whopping $100 million USD in XRSPACE and its VR and metaverse ambitions.

Foxconn XRSPACE
Image credit: Hon Hai Technology Group

Foxconn isn’t dropping the full $100 million right away. The two companies have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Foxconn investing $15million, to begin with, alongside a stake in XRSPACE. Utilising both of their respective expertise – Foxconn’s manufacturing capabilities and XRSPACE’s strengths in AI, VR and computer vision – are looking to build a holistic Metaverse ecosystem.

Foxconn’s investment will allow XRSPACE to continue optimizing its products like the Manova VR headset, PartyON metaverse and GOXR metaverse whilst building the infrastructure needed to expand these digital universes.  

“In order to create a bigger and better metaverse in the future, we need to combine cloud, AI, edge computing, 5G and storage. This is the key reason for this partnership. Foxconn has a clear vision on metaverse,” said Peter Chou, Chairman and CEO of XRSPACE in a statement. “We believe there are so many things we can do to complement each other and work together to make the metaverse better. We are super excited for the partnership with Foxconn, this strategic partnership is not just only making our metaverse experiences better and stronger, Foxconn will also help us a lot on global market development.”

PartyON - XRSPACE

“We are thrilled to partner with XRSPACE, and we envision that this partnership will enhance the software technology, delivering a holistic metaverse hardware and software ecosystem,” adds Mr. Young Liu, Chairman of Hon Hai Technology Group. “Foxconn’s approach towards the Metaverse is the same as that for electric cars—we will provide our expertise within the framework rather than solely focusing on the end product, developing in key areas that include AR/VR, software, infrastructure, content and applications and addressing the increasing demand for cloud services and more powerful server architecture.”

XRSPACE burst onto the XR scene a couple of years ago announcing the €499.00 EUR Manova headset and the accompanying Manova World platform. There’s been little fanfare for the hardware since, but the company has released the PartyON and GOXR apps since then. PartyON is a consumer-focused music metaverse that’s currently available in Meta Quest’s App Lab. GOXR, on the other hand, is designed to help companies create their own metaverse experiences.

As XRSPACE continues to expand its metaverse ambitions, gmw3 will keep you updated.

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Report: Apple Takes AR Lenses Into ‘Trial Production’

A new report from The Information says Foxconn Technology has moved into “trial production” on “semitransparent” lenses for Apple’s AR efforts.

The report indicates that Apple’s partner in iPhone production moved from the prototype stage to trial production of the critical component. Dueling reports in the past few months from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg and reporters for The Information have tried to zero in on Apple’s plans for VR and AR.

It is believed Apple is still some time away from shipping anything to compete with Facebook’s Oculus Quest — a VR headset which targets indoor use. Meanwhile, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has made comments suggesting he sees huge opportunity in AR. The issue is that there are still enormous technical hurdles to overcome before anyone can ship lightweight AR glasses you use outside the home to insert digital objects into your view. Camera-laden VR headsets, of course, can also provide a passthrough way of seeing the environment around the person wearing the device and thus provide certain features through a kind of AR-in-VR mode. Windows MR headsets, Oculus Quest and Valve Index, for instance, all feature modes that let you view the environment on the other side of the otherwise opaque display.

Microsoft’s HoloLens, of course, is a relatively bulky but completely standalone AR headset and the company has encountered some issues with the display technology.

This is all to say that while The Information reports Apple and its Foxconn partner have been in development for three years with these lenses, it’s unclear exactly what kind of device they are meant for and precisely how far away that device might be from shipping to consumers.

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