Goertek may not be a household name, but the China-based company is looking to gear up its manufacturing lines to produce a surprising number of VR/AR headsets and lenses soon.
Goertek recently announced a ¥4 billion (~$572 million USD) convertible corporate bond offering, one quarter of which will be invested in the company’s VR/AR manufacturing capabilities, the company says. The news was first reported by Yivian (Chinese).
Yivian notes that Goertek also hopes to push production of VR/AR devices to 3.5 million more units annually, and increase output of “precision optical lenses and module products” by an annual amount of 5 million units.
Goertek may not be well known to consumers, however it plays a larger role in the VR/AR industry than you might think. It creates parts, reference designs, as well as finished white-label products for some of the biggest companies on the planet.
Mainly noted for its work in acoustic components, the Weifang, China-based company reportedly played a role in the creation of the optical, structural and hardware design of Microsoft’s Mixed Reality headsets.
Back in 2018, Goertek struck a strategic partnership with WaveOptics, which at the time aimed to enable mass manufacture of waveguides for ultimately cheaper AR headsets.
Goertek and Qualcomm Technologies also collaborated on the 5G-enabled XR reference design using the new Snapdragon XR2 platform. At its unveiling earlier this year, it was said Goertek was “deeply involved in the system integration and manufacturing of the XR2 reference design.”
Yivian speculates that Goertek’s recent VR/AR manufacturing push may be related to Facebook’s inevitable follow-up of Oculus Quest, although that remains to be seen. A prospective next-gen Quest would however require that sort of wide manufacturing bandwidth suggested by the Goertek’s recent announcement.
Taking into account that the Quest platform has sold over $100 million in store content, Road to VR estimates Facebook may have sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 million Quest units to date.