Jaunt Drops Focussing on VR In Favor Of AR
With the decision to develop AR based technologies, Jaunt hopes to provide their services through smartphone which indeed holds a great potential.
The tech world had known the name Jaunt to be synonymous with VR and AR related experiences. They gained popularity among gamers by introducing a feature in PlayStation that would enable them to watch movies on PlayStation. However, the company recently made an announcement that came as a shock to many as the company has decided to drop their plans for VR and has decided to concentrate solely on AR and XR. This also resulted in many Jaunt employees losing their jobs.
“This focus means though that we have had to make some tough decisions on our lines of business. We will be winding down a number of VR products and content services in the coming weeks. We will work with our current clients to deliver our existing commitments and manage this transition smoothly and professionally.” – Jaunt
This means that the company won’t be dropping the commitments that they have with their partners. Jaunt will facilitate a smooth transaction between so that the existing customers can still have their VR services from Jaunt. What that said, the future of these services remains to be seen.
The reason why such a promising company had to make compromises on their ambitions can be explained when reviewing the company’s growth over the years. Jaunt is a company that had funding from high profile companies like Google and Disney.
Jaunt propelled itself into the industry of VR and XR when the field was at its teething stage. The company brought new innovations and ideas in practice while the field hasn’t matured enough to get widespread acclamation. This led to new start-ups to identify certain market gaps and make products or solutions to such areas. Hence, the new players gained ground and slowly caught up to jaunt, taking Jaunt’s market share away from them.
Also, the overall growth of the industry isn’t like what investors thought it would be. The VR, AR, and XR platform are not getting the absolute best of customer reception. With the decision to develop AR based technologies, Jaunt hopes to provide their services through smartphone which indeed holds a great potential.
