Logo of VR company Jaunt at its headquarters in the Silicon Valley town of Palo Alto, California. (Photo : Getty Images)
Jaunt Inc, a virtual reality software startup from California, is aiming the shoot, production and distribution of high-quality VR content for the Chinese Market.
"China's VR industry is growing fast. VR companies in China now mainly focus on hardware or content production," said the CEO of Jaunt China, James Fung. "We hope to join with creators, artists and technical personnel in China to create exciting VR stories and experiences and bring them to a global audience."
Jaunt was founded in Sept. 2013 in Los Angeles. It was considered one of the most valuable VR companies in the industry.
The company received a Series C investment of $65 million from both Walt Disney Co. and China Media Capital in Sept. 2015. It also set up branches of its studios in London and Amsterdam.
A joint venture in 2016 set up by Jaunt, the China Media Capital and the Shanghai Media Group resulted in the Jaunt China. It is a joint investment with a total of $100 million.
Jaunt China will provide total content solutions, ranging from camera equipment, rendering technology, later-stage cloud automatic stitching, as well as content distribution.
Jaunt China will be working with the beta edition app of Chi China. This will be available in the app store of select Xiaomi smartphones, which provide support for Xiaomi's VR headset devices.
Tang Mu, the general manager of Xiaomi VR/router as well as the president of Xiaomi Pictures, said: "Jaunt owns movie-level VR shooting equipment, later-stage automatic stitching and cloud transmission services, content release and other solutions, while Xiaomi's rich consumer base, technological experience and market insight can provide Jaunt with powerful support and backup."
The Jaunt VR app is currently the world's largest VR content platform, with nearly 1,550 high-quality VR movies. The Chinese edition of the app is expected to be a top-class VR content platform, which will cover all mainstream terminal devices in the country.
"Jaunt has an advantage in VR video content production, which is in short supply in China, so it has a promising future," said ZHao Ziming, an analyst at Analysis International - Beijing.
