Samsung Exec: Company to Release Multiple AR and VR Products

By Janko Roettgers

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Samsung seems to have a few more headsets under wraps, if new remarks from the company’s director of developer relations for XR and gaming Farshid Fallah are any indication. At this week’s Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara, Calif., Fallah said that had plans to release “multiple AR and VR products” over the coming months.

Fallah made these remarks during a panel that outlined Samsung’s AR and VR strategy Thursday afternoon, which largely focused on features coming to the company’s new Galaxy S10 handset. The S10 comes with an advanced depth sensor as well as a feature called Bixby Vision, which allows users to identify objects, and even shop for them, simply by capturing them with the phone’s camera.

Fallah started the presentation with a look back at Samsung’s early VR efforts, which publicly began with the launch of the original Gear VR headset back in 2015. “Gear VR was a good entry point,” he said, adding: “But things have moved on since then.”

In addition to its mobile VR efforts, Samsung has since released two versions of a high-end VR headset powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mixed Reality platform. The company has also been exploring head-mounted augmented reality, and even introduced an experimental augmented reality headset at its developer conference last year.

That headset, which isn’t being sold as a product to consumers, is based on the same software developer kit that the company originally built for the Gear VR. On Thursday, Fallah suggested that the Gear brand may live on for AR and VR in some fashion. “We have other plans for Gear,” he said, without elaborating further.