Facebook Inc’s Oculus said on Monday at the CES 2018 event it is partnering with Chinese phone maker Xiaomi to make its new standalone virtual reality headset and also revealed that it will launch a version of the product exclusively for the Chinese market.
Oculus said Xiaomi would be its hardware partner for the new Oculus Go headset, announced last October, and would also make the China specific “Mi VR Standalone” using Oculus’ technology. Both the VR headsets will have same hardware underneath but wear different badges for different markets.
Oculus, which social networking giant Facebook acquired in 2014, also said it is working closely with Qualcomm and would use the company’s Snapdragon 821 chipsets to power the mobile VR headsets. The Snapdragon 821 has been the chipset of choice for flagship smartphones from 2016 and 2017, particularly the LG G6 and OnePlus 3T.
The Oculus Go is set to release in early 2018, starting at a price of $199. Expect a lot of specialised apps and services from Facebook and Oculus to be present on these VR headsets.
