ByteDance Stays Strong in VR
The company that owns TikTok, called ByteDance, said they are not closing down their virtual reality business called Pico. They still want to be a part of the virtual reality industry and will continue to work on it for a long time, even though there were some rumors saying they might stop.
“Reports that Pico will be shutting down are untrue. Pico is operating as usual and the company will continue to invest in its augmented reality (XR) business in the long term,” ByteDance said in a statement shared with Reuters. Ta.
XR is a big word that includes both VR and other fancy headsets.
Pico Partnership Solidifies ByteDance’s VR Venture
Pico headsets are like a special type of glasses that you wear to play games or watch videos in a virtual world. They are made by a company called ByteDance and are very popular in China.
Most people in China use Pico headsets because another company called Meta hasn’t brought their similar headsets to China yet.
ByteDance said that they will keep working on their product and make it even better.
ByteDance has been trying to sell Pico in different countries. A newspaper called The Wall Street Journal said that last year, Pico sold more headsets while another company called Meta sold fewer headsets.
VR Innovation Thrives
Bytedance is giving money to people who make computer programs to create more apps for their collection of apps.
But Pico started having problems earlier this year. In February, a news company called Reuters said that Pico had to let go of more than 200 workers to make the company work better.
ByteDance bought Pico in August 2021 when a lot of people were really excited about the metaverse.
But not as many people are talking about the metaverse anymore. A research company found that the number of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) headsets being sold has been going down for the past four quarters.
In the second quarter of this year, the number of headsets sold was 44.6% less than the previous year.
