Apple’s recent acquisitions hint there are exploring vastly different directions.
The world's largest information technology company by revenue is making big plays to assure their next project is a major success. Thankfully they haven't had much success with keeping it a secret.
Several major acquisitions have made it clear that Apple's next major project will revolve around Virtual Reality/ Augmented Reality.
In 2015, Apple acquisitioned a company called FaceShift, that makes facial recognition software. The Special effects team for the latest Star Wars movie used FaceShift technology to make masks look more realistic.
Over two years ago, Apple bought a company that helped make the Xbox Kinect cameras. The Israeli company PrimeSense, made motion detecting technology that was used in Kinect Cameras for the Xbox 360. Gesture control would be extremely important as they give an additional form of input for an AR device. For example Microsoft’s HoloLens uses gesture control to navigate through most of its interface.
Apple also hired Nick Thompson from Microsoft, who helped engineer the HoloLens technology. According to Thompson's LinkedIn page, he was the lead audio engineer for the HoloLens project. Thompson worked on Microsoft’s HoloLens project for over two years, so it makes sense that Apple made a strong effort to poach him from Microsoft. His LinkedIn page also says that Apple hired him in 2015.
Wall Street Journal recently reported that Apple has acquired a startup company called Emotient, that has built an artificial intelligence based system that is able to visually recognize emotions in human faces.
Even though all these piece are in place it isn't probable that Apple will enter the Virtual Reality/ Augmented reality market any time soon. It’s more likely that Apple will take several years in project development. Apple also has a not-so-secret car in development stages, so which project Apple decides to focus on first is anyone's guess.
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