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Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe Steps Down as Company Forms PC and Mobile VR Divisions

Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe Steps Down as Company Forms PC and Mobile VR Divisions

By Jing Cao, Bloomberg | Updated: 14 December 2016 10:00 IST

Highlights

Oculus is creating two groups, one focused on PCs and the other on mobile
Iribe co-founded Oculus with Palmer Luckey
Games dominate the content available on the Oculus Rift headset

Facebook's Oculus Rift is reorganising, with Chief Executive Officer Brendan Iribe stepping down from the role to lead a new division of the virtual reality headset maker.

Oculus is creating two groups, one focused on PCs and the other on mobile, Iribe wrote in a blog post. He'll be leading the PC unit, and Jon Thomason, who joined Oculus in August as its head of software, will take over the mobile group. Iribe said he, Thomason and Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer will work together to find a new Oculus CEO.

"With our growth and product strategy, we've decided to establish new PC and mobile VR groups to be more focused, strengthen development and accelerate our road map," he said in the post. "Facebook is committed to working on VR for the long term."

Iribe, who co-founded Oculus with Palmer Luckey, has pushed for the company to replicate Alphabet Inc.'s success with spreading the Android operating system. Under his leadership, Oculus struck partnerships with other hardware producers to distribute the company's software. For example, the company's headsets and Samsung's Gear VR both work on the same platform. While the Oculus Rift device requires connection to a fast PC with a powerful graphics card to work properly, Gear VR content only requires the computing power of a smartphone.

As of the second quarter, more than 1 million people a month were using Oculus via mobile devices. Last quarter, Facebook said it would invest an additional $250 million in VR content. Games dominate the content available on the Oculus Rift headset, while most people use the mobile-type devices to watch 360-degree videos available on platforms like Facebook 360 and YouTube 360.

(Also see: Xbox One Gets Dropbox App While Xbox One Games Arrive on Oculus Rift)

This past year was expected to be a big one for virtual reality, with Oculus Rift, HTC's Vive and Sony's Playstation VR hitting the consumer market. These three are considered the higher-end headsets that can power much more immersive experiences and high-resolution VR games. But they haven't lived up to expectation. According to Superdata Research, an estimated 1.52 million units of these devices will be shipped to consumers this year, with Oculus taking the smallest share.

Facebook in 2014 bought the gaming-focused virtual reality headset company for about $2 billion, betting that VR will be a preferred method of communication and computing in the future. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also talked about creating a social experience in virtual reality. The company declined further comment about the Oculus changes.

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