LG announceed at the beginning of this week thatit will soon start a brand new promotion for virtual-reality headsets – the VR for G3 – for all new buyers of its G3 smartphone. The headset will be free of charge within this offer. Based on Google’s Cardboard device that uses the G3 as the screen, the device makes it possible for the owners to use it for VR applications and games downnloaded for free or bought Google Play store.
“This is just the beginning of the virtual reality movement, which until recently was expensive and inaccessible to everyday consumers,” announced Chris Yie, one of LG’s marketing executives.
Surely this marketing strategy that LG is starting to reveal is targeting the recent efforts of their South Korean rival, Samsung. Samsung launched the Gear VR in partnership with Oculus Rift, just recently.
The VR deice for G3 follows the launch of Samsung’s Gear VR, in December, which uses the Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 as display and costs $310 on Amazon. It is good to keep in mind that Samsung and LG alike are looking for new ways to build up their smartphone sales, which have been slowing in mature markets, due to the launches of Apple smartphones, and could therefore be doing all this in order to simply get a new hold of the smartphone market.
The VR for G3
However, the new LG headset could be an early sign of how competition or cooperation have their word in shaping the world of mobile virtual reality — Samsung might be considering rather aligning with Facebook’s VR-goggle maker Oculus on the Gear VR, while LG might start working with Google, in return.
The two types of headset are just the first examples of the future virtual-reality and augmented-reality devices just waiting to be created. Now that the idea is out there, many tech firms will start to work to add the latest technologies into the previously unexploited markets. Virtual reality aims to provide an immersive experience for gamers and many other applications of VR technology,. At the same time, augmented reality offers an new and interactive overlay of the real world. AR aims to provide extra information for theenchancemet of the user’s experience.
Google, Samsung, LG, Magic Leap, Microsoft and all the other premium players are in the arena already. Let the games begin!
