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Alibaba Corporation invested in AR-device manufacturer Nreal
Chinese tech giant Alibaba announced an investment in augmented reality glasses company Nreal. Nreal raised $60 million in a Series C+ financing round. In addition to Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance invested in the company.
This interest in AR technology is due to the active development of meta universes. All the advanced corporations in the world are trying one way or another to join the Metaverse. In turn, Nreal has a leading position in China among the manufacturers of augmented reality devices. The current round allowed the company to increase its funding to the $200 million mark.
Nreal plans to use the funds to develop new applications and content development. In addition, the company intends to expand its presence in both the domestic and global markets.
Experts assign an important role to augmented and virtual reality devices for the development of the meta-universe. The leader of AR and VR technologies is Microsoft Corporation, which owns the majority of the market. However, everything may change after the release of devices from Apple, the presentation of which the entire technological world is waiting for.
Nreal unveiled its updated augmented reality glasses last fall. Externally, they are almost identical to sun protection accessories, but when used, they create a virtual screen in front of the eyes. The glasses’ display is Micro-OLED, and they connect to a smartphone via cable. The new version is available for iOS devices, and is also compatible with iPads and Android tablets, but is controlled exclusively through the phone. The lenses change the position at 3 angles, so each user can adjust the clarity of the image himself.
The display frequency is 90 Hz with a pixel density of up to 49 ppi. The glasses have a field of view of about 46 degrees, which corresponds to an image on a display measuring 130 inches at a distance of 3 meters. They do not display the space around the user, but only the video that is streamed through the app. Therefore, the device from Nreal does not have a function to track hand and space movements. To do this, the developers removed the cameras that previous versions were equipped with. Such a step will protect the privacy of users, reducing the risk of leaking confidential information.
The company plans to expand production of the glasses this year. Nreal considers the American market to be its priority. The idea to develop a new product came to the company after analyzing the segment of AR technology. The majority of users use augmented reality glasses to watch videos and create various applications. Nreal goggles are a compact version, which is also available to a wide range of consumers.