Nokia has announced some welcome changes to its Digital Media business strategy. Nokia OZO media technologies will now focus on enabling consumer experiences by providing solutions like OZO Audio to its customers. This change in focus is the result of VR market developing slower than Nokia originally expected.
The pioneering Nokia OZO VR camera and software solution for creating, delivering and experiencing VR content became the de facto choice for professional 360 video productions in 2016-17. We were delighted to see OZO technology being used by Disney, Sony Pictures, Coachella, UEFA and many others in marquee productions and events worldwide. While we had great momentum and partnerships, the VR market developed slower than we originally expected. In October 2017 Nokia Technologies decided to focus on patent, brand and technology licensing and on opportunities in the digital health market.
The official blog post touts OZO Audio to be the very first audio, imaging, and video technologies solution focusing consumer experience and asks us to stay tuned for many more. OZO Audio currently powers Nokia 8, Nokia 7 and Nokia 6 2018 smartphones.
All of this will be enabled by powerful technology. We started by licensing our unique OZO Audio spatial audio capture technology to smartphone and camera makers, with the beautiful Nokia 8 smartphone leading the charge. For professional audio productions, Spatial Audio Designer by New Audio Technology now supports creation and export of audio mixes in the superbly accurate and flexible OZO Audio format.
OZO Audio is the first technology offering we are now bringing to market, but it’s just the beginning. Stay tuned for more to come.
Coming to the Nokia OZO VR offerings, Nokia has now decided to open them for partners.
- First, we have reached an agreement with Imevo, a new company founded by former Nokia engineers and product leaders in California, to license the industry leading OZO Live software and continue its development into new offerings that will benefit VR content creators and broadcasters worldwide. I’m really excited for the team at Imevo and wish them great success as they continue to break new ground in VR content creation and delivery.
- Second, we have opened up the OZO Deliver specification to allow industry partners to support best-in-class VR experiences with viewport adaptive streaming. Wowza has already made this solution available to their customers, and we expect others to follow suit.
- Third, based on Nokia’s substantial research in VR technologies we have recently made significant contributions to standardization, such as MPEG OMAF specification and work on point cloud compression, and plan to continue this in 2018.
