Oculus has acquired InfiniLED, a Micro-LED display developer based in Ireland. Oculus did not say the amount of money it paid, but it did confirm the acquisition and said that the team joined Oculus Research in a new office dedicated to research in Cork.
Oculus is currently using dual 3.1" 1200x1080 VR AMOLED displays produced by SDC. This is an interesting acquisition which follows Apple's acqusition of Micro-LED developer LuxVue in 2014. There were some reports in June 2016 that Apple is looking to develop a Micro-LED display for future smartwatches, although this was not confirmed.
Micro-LED is promising as it can enable an emissive display that is actually much more efficient than current OLED displays. But actually producing a display made from millions of individual micro LEDs is a challenge - which is why many believe the first applications will be relatively low-resolution wearable displays.
Is Oculus really thinking about developing its own micro-LED based VR display? or maybe the interest here is different, for example using micro-LEDs in a VR headset or devices for a different display application? Some VR headsets for example use LEDs on the outer side to enable tracking.
This will sure be an interesting acquisition to watch, but it's likely that it'll take years before we know Oculus' real intention here.
