When Nokia announced its first piece of hardware since selling its handsets business to Microsoft, a few eyebrows must have gone up. Nokia's products have traditionally been mass-market, consumer devices for established industries -- and Ozo was anything but.
Announced in July, Ozo is a virtual reality camera for film and media professionals -- a silver, spherical piece of hardware that some wags have pointed out bears more than a passing resemblance to the Star Wars light saber-training droid. With eight cameras capable of capturing 2K video, the Ozo records both 3D images and sound 360 degrees, to be outputted on VR systems.
It's not the first piece of hardware to launch under the Nokia brand after the handset unit sale -- Foxconn makes and sells the Nokia N1 tablet under licence, and phones are expected to follow through a similar model -- but it's the first device that Nokia has made itself.
So why did Nokia enter the digital media market? According to Paul Melin, Nokia Technologies' head of digital media, the idea for the Ozo came from company engineers who pitched the idea to management.
"This was not the result of some kind of corporate planning process where we envisioned that we wanted to enter virtual reality and set up a team to come up with a product.
Announced in July, Ozo is a virtual reality camera for film and media professionals -- a silver, spherical piece of hardware that some wags have pointed out bears more than a passing resemblance to the Star Wars light saber-training droid. With eight cameras capable of capturing 2K video, the Ozo records both 3D images and sound 360 degrees, to be outputted on VR systems.
It's not the first piece of hardware to launch under the Nokia brand after the handset unit sale -- Foxconn makes and sells the Nokia N1 tablet under licence, and phones are expected to follow through a similar model -- but it's the first device that Nokia has made itself.
So why did Nokia enter the digital media market? According to Paul Melin, Nokia Technologies' head of digital media, the idea for the Ozo came from company engineers who pitched the idea to management.
"This was not the result of some kind of corporate planning process where we envisioned that we wanted to enter virtual reality and set up a team to come up with a product.
source: Zdnet