DigiTimes is reporting this morning that Apple has partnered with U.S. game developer Valve to develop its rumored AR headset, due to launch next year.
Apple reportedly has partnered with US game developer Valve to develop AR head-mounted display devices, which may be released in the second half of 2020 at the earliest, with Taiwan's ODMs Quanta Computer and Pegatron said to handle the assembly job, according to industry sources.
Creator of the popular
Steam digital storefront and delivery platform, Valve launched Steam machine consoles in 2015 and released its first VR headset,
Valve Index, in April 2019. However, Apple's partnership with the company is said to be focused on AR, not VR.
Apple will cooperate with Valve on AR headsets rather than VR devices, as its CEO
Tim Cook believes that AR can make digital content become part of the user's world and will be as popular as smartphones with consumers. This has also promoted Apple to step up the development of AR software by recruiting more engineers for graphic design, system interface and system architecture segments.
Just last month, respected Apple analyst
Ming-Chi Kuo said Apple was cooperating with third-party brands to launch its first head-mounted AR product in 2020.
Back in July,
DigiTimes reported that Apple had temporarily stopped developing AR/VR headsets and that the team working on them was disbanded in May and reassigned to other product developments.
However, according to the latest information from
DigiTimes' sources, Apple was actually in the process of shifting from in-house development to collaborative development with Valve.
Apple's AR headset is rumored to enter mass production as soon as the fourth quarter of this year in time for an early 2020 launch, according to
Kuo.
Kuo has said Apple's glasses would be marketed as an iPhone accessory and primarily take a display role while wirelessly offloading computing, networking, and positioning to the iPhone. He believed mass production could begin at some point between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the second quarter of 2020.
In November 2017,
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported that Apple's headset would run a
custom iOS-based operating system dubbed "rOS" for "reality operating system." At the time, he said Apple had not finalized how users would control the headset, but possibilities included touchscreens,
Siri voice activation, and head gestures.
Quanta Computer and Pegatron are said to be handling the manufacturing and assembly job for Apple's long-rumored AR product. Quanta can reportedly produce AR headsets at a lower cost by leveraging camera lens technology licensed by Lumus, according to today's report.
DigiTimes' sources often provide reliable information, but the site has a mixed track record when it comes to interpreting that information and accurately deciphering Apple's plans, so treat this report with a degree of skepticism for now.
www.macrumors.com
