It looks like Magic Leap could be gearing up to jump into the world of mobile AR, as the company recently published a job listing for a senior software engineer who will be tasked with building “a cross-platform framework that enables large scale shared AR experiences between mobile devices (iOS, Android) and Magic Leap devices.”
As first reported by Variety, the job listing specifies that candidates will also be tasked with “implementing high-performance, production quality AR and computer vision algorithms, and designing and building the Magic Leap mobile SDK.”
While Magic Leap declined Variety’s bid to comment on the job listing, the writing on the wall is fairly clear: Magic Leap wants to create an app ecosystem that plays equally well across its Magic Leap One AR headset and both Android and iOS mobile devices.
Underlining this, the listing says candidates should posses experience in building native mobile applications on iOS or Android, and hands-on experience with AR platforms like ARKit or ARCore. Experience in game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine is also a must.
The posting specifies that the successful candidate will work out of the company’s Sunnvale, California office.
Magic Leap launched their debut product, the Magic Leap One, in August 2018. The $2,300 AR headset is intended primarily for developers, and comes with a tethered compute unit, and a single dedicated controller. The company has since funded the creation of several consumer-style apps, most of which are either free or in the $5-$10 range.
With a truly consumer-focused Magic Leap headset still on the horizon, the possibility of opening up their platform to smartphone and tablet-based AR is an interesting move. While it could seem like a technological step backwards at face value, it may actually be a way of getting extant mobile AR developers interested in targeting Magic Leap headsets in addition to the much larger built-in download base of Android/iOS users.
While the company has been tossing out plenty of cash to fill its budding app store, it’s clear the platform needs a strong set of apps to truly take off.