ByteDance, the owner of short video sharing apps TikTok and Douyin, confirmed Sunday that it acquired the virtual reality headset maker Pico Interactive Inc.
The Beijing-headquartered company did not disclose the details of the deal. The representative added that the company intends to focus on developing consumer-facing VR devices for the Chinese market after the acquisition.
Pico was founded in 2015 by Henry Zhou and is now the third-largest virtual reality headset maker globally as of the first quarter of 2021, followed by Facebook Inc.’s Oculus and Chinese company DPVR, according to IDC.
Although Pico does not ship as many headsets as Oculus globally, Facebook does not sell its headsets in the Chinese market.
With this acquisition, ByteDance will be following social media giant Facebook into the VR space through its own purchase of headset maker Oculus in 2014. Facebook has focused its efforts on reducing the costs of headsets to make them more accessible to consumers and developing more use cases for VR such as remote working apps like “Horizon Workrooms.”
