Apple joins LG and Valve investing up to $10.6M in OLED display maker eMagin
Summary
eMagin’s technology is notable in that it has created a new kind of display that can be used in VR headsets, which provides a sharper image by using a denser layout of lines (versus the pixels commonly used in existing products).(Notably, those investing in eMagin aren’t putting all their eggs into one basket on this front, it seems: LG has also patented another way of coping with the issue, and there are other routes beyond OLED that are also being explored, such as liquid crystal on silicon displays .)Although eMagin is arguably working at what might become the forefront of how VR experiences are delivered, the company has been fairly under the radar and modest in size — underscoring perhaps how we have yet to see a real breakthrough of the technology in terms of market penetration.Case in point: when we uncovered in November that Apple had acquired VR headset maker Vrvana for around $30 million, it refused to confirm the deal to us, although it did not deny it.Other acquisitions that Apple has made in the general area of mixed reality include SMI , an eye-tracking firm that was working on solutions for VR and AR headsets; Flyby Media , metaio , Emotient, and Faceshift .
