Facebook working on 'enterprise editions' of its standalone Oculus VR headsets

Facebook announced commercial versions of its virtual reality headset, the Oculus Go, at its F8 Developers’ conference. The company later in September 2018 introduced Oculus Quest VR headset that came with touch controllers and without the need of a PC to operate.[caption id="attachment_6198621" align="alignnone" width="1024"]

Image: Reuters[/caption]While Facebook has been investing heavily in VR hardware trying to make it more mainstream, it looks like now it wants to go the enterprise route as well.According to a job posting discovered by Variety, Facebook is said to be working on an ‘enterprise edition’ of its Oculus Go and Oculus Quest VR headsets. As cited in the job posting, Oculus VR is looking for a software engineer position for its AR/VR Enterprise team who could help build special versions of the standalone Oculus Go and Quest VR headsets.“Starting with VR, we are building an Oculus Go and Oculus Quest Enterprise edition expected to launch in 2019. This effort encompasses everything from hardware integrations, software platforms, enterprise-developer ecosystems and SDKs, SLAs, and more,” Oculus mentioned in its job posting.Notably, Facebook introduced Oculus for Business, Rift bundles in 2017 to help businesses bring VR experience to the workplace. As per the report, a company spokesperson said that the Oculus enterprise edition products will be part of its ‘existing business products.’

Facebook’s plan of expanding the ‘enterprise side’ of its VR business is understandable given that major VR headset makers are now focusing on corporate clients. HTC announced Vive Focus wireless VR headset for businesses last year.Recently at MWC 2019, Microsoft showed off its second-gen mixed reality headset — the HoloLens 2. The headset claim to be more immersive than the original HoloLens, it overlays computer images on the real world. But while HTC Vive Focus or Oculus standalone VR headsets are designed for the masses, Microsoft noted that its new mixed reality headset is aimed for the developers who want to experiment and start building apps.While Facebook hopes that its standalone VR headsets might appeal to businesses, the Oculus Quest can have an advantage over other VR headsets given that it can move freely with two motion controllers and offer high-quality visuals.Oculus hasn’t shared any details as of when it plans to introduce the enterprise editions of its VR headsets, however, reports suggest that Facebook might share information at its annual conference, Oculus Connect later this year.