A” leading viewfinder manufacturer ” will employ Tobii’s eye tracking technology in its next HMD.
UPGRADE:
Tobii AB seems to have confirmed to present its financial results for the third quarter that the “leading manufacturer” to the one they signed an agreement to carry the eye-tracking virtual reality consumption is not StarVR, which increases the chances of that company is HTC, given that Qualcomm, in principle, is dedicated to creating reference designs used by other companies.
At VR, we continue to work with customers and integration projects as planned. A highlight was StarVR’s announcement of its upcoming StarVR One product, which includes Tobii eye tracking as one of its core features. We also announced that Tobii has signed a supply agreement with one of the leading VR viewer manufacturers, which is a clear indication that eye tracking will be widely adopted in VR. According to IDC, the RV/AR market will grow by 30% this year and is expected to reach 53 million units by 2022. In the industry, eye tracking is generally seen as a necessity to create truly robust user experiences. I am convinced that eye tracking will be incorporated into most future viewers and that Tobii is well positioned to capture a large part of that market, ” he explains Henrik Eskilsson, CEO of Tobii, in a statement.
As we can see from the above statement, Eskilsson clearly distinguishes the new deal they have with StarVR and their new One viewer, or so it seems. In the coming months we will know more about whether HTC is finally preparing a new viewer for 2019.
ORIGINAL NEWS (10/10/2018):
Tobii, a company specializing in eye tracking, has announced that it has signed an agreement with a leading viewer manufacturer to integrate its technology into the next virtual reality viewer that will launch that manufacturer.
“We have made a great effort to adapt our leading eye tracking technology for VR together with key customers and partners and of course it is very exciting to be able to announce this agreement. It’s an important milestone for Tobii to establish eye tracking as a core VR technology, ” he says Henrik Eskilsson, CEO of Tobii.
The deal includes the Tobii dedicated chip (EyeChip) and the license of the IP, software and VR4 system design, which we had already seen integrated with HTC Vive through a developer kit. Without a doubt, HTC is one of the companies that has been working with Tobii in recent years, so it could be that “leading manufacturer” to which they refer, although we can not forget Qualcomm, who also integrated the technology in its latest presentation kit of the Snapdragon 845.
Without binding volume commitments, Tobii does not share at this time any information regarding potential sales volumes, although deliveries expected to take place in 2019, so it seems that next year or the next could arrive this first commercial viewer with integrated eye tracking, if we do not take into account the accessories or devkits already available.
