The owner of TikTok ByteDance is considering a purchase of the Chinese virtual reality hardware developer Pico. ByteDance was founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming and Liang Rubo. As well as running TikTok and its Chinese counterpart Douyin, ByteDance also operates Toutiao, a news application. The company has made several acquisitions previously but all of them have been related to mobile applications or news companies. It has as of yet not thrown its hat into the technology ring. This proposed deal is reminiscent of Facebook's purchase of Oculus in 2014 for a combination of $400 million in cash and 23.1 million Facebook shares.
Pico the VR hardware developer, founded in 2015, has a business model of selling VR headsets primarily to other businesses globally with the only general consumers that have access to the products being in China. The company's flagship VR headset the NeoPro has some impressive stats. It boasts a 4K display and a 72/90hz refresh rate which, while lower than the Oculus Quest 2 for example, is still a solid rate for business to business purposes. With the addition of eye-tracking, Pico has the potential to take the VR world by storm should ByteDance acquire it, no doubt for a hefty fee.
Reports by local media via Bloomberg state negotiations between the two parties are ongoing with no deal yet, according to a source. If it were to go through, there would be no telling the impact it could have on the landscape of the VR world, which is quite crowded as is. The Oculus Quest and HTC Vive are already marquee names. Meanwhile, PlayStation VR is rumored to be releasing an updated headset soon, with Apple likely not far behind.
What This Means For ByteDance And VR
The deal could wind up being incredibly lucrative for both Pico and ByteDance. With such a massive company backing the VR aspect, Pico would have the funds to push for stronger research and development, making new breakthroughs in the VR/AR space. As a Chinese tech giant already, ByteDance has the potential to corner that market with this acquisition. It's also possible the company will opt to keep Pico a primarily business-to-business VR hardware developer, a decision that could prove vital in its own right.
Questions remain about how the TikTok owner would conduct itself in the virtual reality sphere. Would users need a TikTok/Douyin account to use the headset, similar to how the Oculus Quest 2 requires the user to have a Facebook about? How much will it cost and will it be built for gaming? Will there be functionality with TikTok? If the deal goes through, hopefully, time will tell.
Source: Bloomberg