Apple has bought gaze recognition company, SMI, although it has made no formal statement about the deal, simply quoting its standard line that it buys technology companies from time to time.
SMI, which is based in Germany, was formed in 1991 and has been showing its technology in VR headsets to support foveated rendering. As we have reported, the company has been working with a range of companies including Arm, Qualcomm and Nvidia.
Analyst Comment
Regular readers will know how important we think gaze will be in the long term. This acquisition gives Apple one of the top technology companies in the field and is a good move for the company. One of the reasons that SMI had been working with processor companies is that gaze takes a lot of processing power at the moment (which is probably why Intel is also an investor in Tobii). (BR)
We saw SMI’s tracking at MWC in 2016. Image:Meko
