Magic Leap was once considered the future of augmented reality (AR), and now, the company not only announced the need to lay off employees, but also said that it would abandon the consumer market.
On April 22, local time, Magic Leap announced on the official website that the company would dismiss “many employees” and announced that they would abandon the original consumer market. Focus more on corporate customers.
As for how many employees will be fired, Bloomberg said that half of Magic Leap employees may be fired, about 1,000. At the same time, Bloomberg also pointed out that Magic Leap is still looking for opportunities to sell, and may expect the sale value to reach 10 billion US dollars.
Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz said in a statement issued on the official website: “We are going through a very difficult period, we are in the process of the new coronary pneumonia pandemic, It affects our daily life. All business activities around the world are trying to make changes to meet unprecedented challenges. For us, we also need to examine the operation of the company. “
Therefore, Abovitz said that the company has made a “difficult decision to lay off staff”, but did not disclose the number of layoffs. Abovitz also said that in the future, Magic Leap’s development path will be shifted from consumer-grade AR to the enterprise and healthcare fields, because he expects that in these two fields, people will hope for more remote experiences after the epidemic. He also emphasized Magic Leap’s past cutting-edge technology research and development, so that they can provide a wealth of technology platforms and related knowledge, which can help themselves and other companies make changes.
In 2018, Magic Leap launched One AR glasses, which failed to meet its target of setting up 100,000 units a year after its release. Starting in the second half of 2019, Magic Leap intends to move closer to the enterprise service field, and launched a $ 3,000 augmented reality enterprise service package. This package is designed to provide enterprises with augmented reality and mixed reality services, which is similar to Microsoft’s Hololens business. . Magic Leap also competed with Microsoft and eventually won a military contract to introduce AR technology to the military.
Speaking of Magic Leap, many people are not unfamiliar. This company once praised it as a legend with an augmented reality demo video. Founded in 2010, Magic LeapIn the past ten years, there have been 5 rounds of public financing, and a total of 2.5 billion US dollars of investment has been obtained, including investments by large companies such as Google, Alibaba, and JPMorgan. But even though the products have been officially launched so far, the company has failed to complete “economic independence” and still relies heavily on investors’ capital investment.
As for augmented reality technology, so far, there does not seem to be a company on the market that can succeed with this technology alone. Although Apple and Facebook have long stated that they are optimistic about this area and that this is the next consumer platform for mobile technology, the reality is that no startup can still build a successful business around AR hardware. According to foreign media statistics, last year, three well-capitalized AR startups including ODG, Meta and Daqri closed down, and all of these companies focused on attracting corporate customers.