The number of patents obtained in 2019 increased by 64% over 2018.
Editor’s note: This article comes from Tencent Technology .
In the past five years, there has been a wave of virtual reality research and development in the world, but this wave has basically fallen into failure. Today, Facebook, which has caused the world of virtual reality, has turned to augmented reality (AR). ). According to the latest news from foreign media, Facebook’s attention to augmented reality technology has led to a large increase in the number of its patents. Last year, the increase was as high as 60%, and nearly 1,000 patents were granted.
According to foreign media reports, Facebook may be making slow progress in adapting to the smartphone revolution, but analysis of the company’s granted patents shows that the company is determined not to miss the next major hardware revolution, which is augmented reality.
According to the analysis of US Patent and Trademark Office data by professional agency IFI, the social media giant Facebook, based in Menlo Park, California, obtained 64% more patents in 2019 than in 2018.
Facebook obtained a total of 989 patents last year, more than three times as many as five years ago. In 2014, the company received only 279 patents.
In the list of companies with the number of patents, Facebook jumped 22nd and ranked 36th, but it does not pose an imminent threat to IBM. IBM obtained a record 9262 patents last year and has become a new for 27 consecutive years. Add the most patents to US companies.
It is reported that Facebook won more patents in 2019 than technology companies such as Philips and Texas Instruments.
The number of patents does not necessarily mean that Facebook is the most innovative in any field, but it does indicate where the company is spending research funding and expects some return on investment in the future.
Larry Cardy, a senior analyst at IFI, a patent research company, said that Facebook’s patent growth rate is similar to that of the intellectual property giants Amazon and Apple, which rank ninth and seventh respectively in the patent rankings. Each has more than twice as many patents as Facebook.
In terms of the distribution of patented technologies, Facebook is similar to other Internet-based computer companies, such as data processing and digital transmission, but its fastest growing patents are in newer categories, which may indicate that the company is important for future technology development. the opinion of.
Facebook’s 169 patents in the optical component category mark a nearly sixfold increase. Most of this growth comes from head-up display subcategories.
Facebook owns virtual reality hardware company Oculus and in November acquired the popular Beat Saber game in Prague, Czech-based game studio.
For example, a patent granted to Facebook by the US Patent and Trademark Office on November 5th entitled “Compact Head-Mounted Display for Artificial Reality”
Katy said: “I think it’s safe to say that they have given priority to headsets, which is the main focus of their development.”
Facebook obtained 127 patents in 2013, and for the first time entered the list of the top 300 companies in the United States that received patents.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg often says that when the company turned to mobile devices around 2010, Facebook wasn’t adapting to new media as quickly as it should.
Facebook will avoid making the same mistake. According to Zuckerberg, the next important computing platform after smartphones will be augmented reality. The company has completed several acquisitions and hired hundreds of people to Research and build products.
Facebook spokesman Ha Thai said on Tuesday that the company is “investing heavily in augmented reality, virtual reality and home hardware products”
“Sometime in the 1920s, we will get a groundbreaking augmented reality headset that will redefine our relationship with technology,” Zuckerberg said in an article on Facebook this month . “Although some of the early devices looked clunky, I think these will be the most humane and social technology platforms anyone has built to date.”
Zuckerberg also said that augmented reality tools will bring huge changes to society. For example, people can use augmented reality to work remotely, get jobs in different places, and avoid high-price areas.
However, whether Facebook and Zuckerberg ’s dreams of augmented reality can become a reality still needs question marks.
Earlier, Apple introduced augmented reality development interfaces and functions on smartphones, encouraging third parties to develop augmented reality applications, such as measuring the length, width, and height of rooms with mobile phones. Has gradually lost interest.
According to various sources, Apple is also developing an augmented reality glasses.
It should be pointed out that virtual reality is to immerse people in the endIn a completely fictional scene, it is suitable for application scenarios such as online games and movies, while augmented reality is a digital image superimposed on a real screen to provide a more unique experience. For example, when a user wears augmented reality glasses to see a restaurant, they can immediately see the restaurant’s business hours, discounted dishes of the day, and other diners’ evaluations through the superimposed information.
In the virtual reality market, Facebook’s $ 2 billion acquisition of Oculus has triggered a development boom around the world, but for various reasons, the virtual reality market has entered a cold winter, and a large number of startups have withdrawn. Due to a lack of killer apps or content, Sony, Facebook and HTC have limited sales of virtual reality headsets. HTC, which is betting heavily on virtual reality, is also passive in its performance. (Tencent Technology Review / Cheng Xi)