Kickstarter: Austrian Tech Start-up Wants to Conquer Virtual Reality
Kickoff for entering virtual reality: Innovative tech company EXCHIMP is collecting money on the crowdfunding portal kickstarter.com to finance one of the lightest, All-In-One Virtual Reality device worldwide. The start of serial production requires at least 37.500 euros.
This technology is going to reach the revenue mark of one billion dollar worldwide this year: Virtual Reality is said to be “the next big thing” of the technology and entertainment industry. The market potential of VR devices and contents is expected to exceed 22,5 billion dollar by the year 2020. “That is a strikingly dynamic expansion for a new technology – we have been observing this over a long period”, Stefan Ponsold, founder of EXCHIMP, confirms. Ponsold and his team have been dealing with trends, hypes and innovations of the tech industry over the past years: “Our business is the transformation of potential technologies into applicable products worldwide – based on ‘open innovation’”, the innovation manager states.
Kickstarter campaign starts with a premiere
Ponsold and his team want to stir up the virtual reality industry: the first virtual reality glasses developed in Austria launch on April 28 on the online crowdfunding platform kickstarter. EXCHIMP shows off technological finesse – especially the display: the resolution of 2560×1440 even exceeds industry leaders like Oculus Rift or HTC Vive. “The display is our window to the virtual universe – therefore a special focus was placed on this essential component during development”, Ponsold explains.
Advantage through weight reduction
By relocating the battery and hardware components from the head section to the handheld control, EXCHIMP beats the best in the matter of weight: the virtual reality glasses undercut the weight of market leader HTC by a third. Ponsold is sure that these technical sophistications, combined with a runtime up to 7 hours and prominent partners – such as Intel in hardware or FIBRUM in software – shall raise funds of 37.500 € through the crowd. The delivery of the product is planned to take place in September. EXCHIMP wants to stir up the market: “We want to prove that you do not have to be based in Silicon Valley anymore – you can drive innovations anywhere”.
The company:
The team based partly in Sunnyvale (US), Graz (Austria) and Shenzhen (China) has 30+ years’ experience in development and worldwide distribution of consumer electronics. In the past years, they have raised more than USD 400.000,- through the crowd and always deliver to their backers on time. Their vision of the team for this first VR campaign is to make it more accessible to a new audience that hasn’t been able to buy high-end systems such as Oculus or HTV Vive.
