Jun 1 2016, 8:40 am | Posted by Jasmin Sasin

Chinese Media Group Announces Intentions to Invest in US Virtual Reality Company

One of the largest media group in China the Shanghai Media Group recently announced its intentions to invest in a Silicon Valley based virtual reality company Jaunt Inc. in efforts to expand its business into the virtual reality market. Shanghai Media Group and its subsidiary Shanghai Oriental Pearl Media Co. Ltd. will invest in Jaunt and then the company’s technology arm Whaley Technology Co Ltd. will be the one to establish the joint venture Jaunt China.

Jaunt China replicates the business models of Jaunt and bring in the cinematic virtual reality experiences to the Chinese market. International VR specialists will be teamed up and will produce and distribute premium content that will be used for advertising, films and exhibitions while taking advantage of the extensive IP resources of the shareholders. 200 million yuan that comes from Shanghai Media Group 1 billion yuan SMG Cultural Innovation and Entrepreneurship Fund is allocated to the VR content production with a goal in developing 500 VR productions in two years and covers TV programs, games, music and entertainment shows.

VR content production and IP development are the projects that SMG built their reputation on, and they are more than happy in doing their part in promoting VR development. China’s VR market is said to be worth 1.54 billion yuan in 2015 and is expected to increase to 5 billion yuan in 2016. Market players say that the fast expanding VR sector and content production in China offers great potential in future competition and growth.

VR equipment provides solutions on the how to experience, content generators and VR producers are offering solutions in the what to experience side. In the past years the virtual reality market has focused mainly on hardware development and now content developers are taking a share of the market since consumer realize that using VR hardware to experience boring content is not exciting and more clients are asking for VR content that are being used in branding and marketing. Once a gaming tool, VR applications now covers a bigger range of sectors from shopping, consumer goods, promotions and real estate.