Nokia last week sent out press invitations for a VIP event set for July 28th. With its “Nowhere, now here” tag line, the invitation was short on details, resulting in a number of interesting theories including a possible return to the smartphone arena. Citing unnamed sources familiar with the company’s plans, Re/code suggests instead that the Finnish company will unveil its first major virtual reality project, a new VR headset.
Virtual reality is set to establish itself as one of the most exciting segments in consumer electronics. A number of companies, including Facebook, HTC, Microsoft and Samsung, have either already released VR devices or are close to doing so. Nokia could use this space to reenter the consumer hardware market without breaching the terms of its 2014 agreement with Microsoft that prevent it from reentering the smartphone space until 2016 at the earliest.
Little is known at this point about the Nokia VR device. It was reportedly developed by Nokia Technologies, the business unit that remained with Nokia when the company sold off its devices business to Microsoft in 2014. The same group was behind the Nokia N1 Android tablet and is rumoured to be working on a number of other projects as well.
Looking more closely at the press invitation, it certainly appears that the image could be a close-up of a VR headset.
Source : Re/code