The domestic AR company Realmax won 200 million yuan in Series A financing, and the investor was SDIC Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. This is another large-scale financing following the AR hardware company's video technology in late April. Realmax's official position for itself is “to integrate hardware, software, content, ecology, and usersâ€, and from the perspective of its product release, it has always attached great importance to vertical industry applications. However, its capital, SDIC Intelligence, stated that it has invested more in industrial-level enterprises and believes that “Realmax has a high degree of internationalization, and its AR technology can be combined with SDIC's smart investment in industrial-grade enterprises.â€
As early as early 2016, Realmax released six AR devices in one breath. However, the current product list of its official website has been completely replaced by the newly released two devices.
RealMax Group is headquartered in Shanghai, China, with offices in New York, Germany, Munich, Germany and Hong Kong. Founded in 2003, the Chinese name is Tapu Bohai Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. However, according to public reports, in fact, its predecessor, Shanghai Tap Instrument, was a hardware partner of Apple's acquisition of AR engine giant Metalio in China. Xin Jun, currently co-founder and Group Vice President of Realmax, joined Metaio in 2010 and became Partner of Asia Pacific in Asia in 2012. Xin Junyi joined Shanghai Tap Instruments in 2015, and in the same year, the company began to change its business direction and began to enter the AR field. At this time, the accumulation of this company on AR should be on the side of software, for example in image recognition, environmental tracking, 3D rendering and so on.
In 2010, Sonny joined Metaio, an augmented reality and machine vision solutions company, and has been exploring in the AR industry for seven years. In 2015, when Metaio was acquired by Apple, he was a partner in Metaio China. After leaving Metaio, he brought his dream of artisans to RealMax and they were able to create an excellent AR product.
Now they are one step closer to their dreams. It is reported that RealMax has released the Realseer DK series for developers, the Realseer Pro series for enterprise customization, and the industrial-grade wearable flat-panel Realwear HMT series AR products for industrial users.
Sonny revealed that the AR industry 7 years ago cannot be compared with today's. At that time, the small startup companies did not have a clear direction and were in a state of exploration. In addition, at the time, the industrial chain had not yet formed and it was difficult for companies to obtain support from hardware supply chains or software developers.
Now is another scene. Around the terminal products, there are upstream chips, module manufacturers, and downstream software and content developers in the AR industry chain, with more and more distribution channels. With so many years of accumulation, Sonny Xin realized that the AR industry's ecological prototype has already formed. RealMax hopes to gather the strengths of upstream and downstream partners in the industry and work together to make AR's business a success.
RealMax believes that its core competence lies in three areas: technology, business, and ecology.
AR technology mainly includes display technology, tracking and positioning technology and wearability. RealMax said that its dual free-form surface production process has reached more than 95% yield, and in 2016 will be able to achieve the degree of mass production. RealMax's lab now has a world-first optical solution that will be used in RealMax's AR products.
RealMax also has more mature tracking and positioning technology, and is also exploring good commercial application solutions with partners. In addition, because the RealMax team has a very rich AR industry experience, its product design is very user-friendly. They can also make further technical improvements based on the basic shape of the glasses and their actual application needs.
In business, despite being hailed as the next-generation computing platform, AR faces many challenges in the actual commercial landing. Thanks to many years of teamwork experience in the AR industry, RealMax knows what pits are in the industry. Sonny said that when communicating with partners, they can use their own experience to help the other side avoid many detours.
In terms of ecology, the conference held by RealMax shows that the company has brought together a number of upstream and downstream eco partners, including HPE (HP Enterprise), PTC, SAP, National Instruments, OSI Soft, UBiMAX, Intel, ARToolworks, Unity, LeSco, Goss and other domestic and foreign innovative technology companies, as well as Lingang Group, Zhongguancun, Silicon Valley RAVV, National Development and Investment Corporation, Jisheng Capital and other investment, incubators.
In addition, RealMax is optimistic about the Chinese market for two reasons. First, China has a good market environment and great potential. Second, it has national policy support.
China is the country with the largest Internet population in the world, and it is also the country with the largest number of smartphone users and mobile Internet users. What is even more commendable is that the popularity of QR code payment has made China one of the countries with the highest level of banknotes. In addition, people who have not used VR or AR products in China have at least heard about related products or technologies. What's more, Shenzhen's VR glasses products even have tens of millions of shipments. This shows that the Chinese C-end market is well-educated. These points provide good market conditions for the outbreak of AR.
In terms of policy, China has been carrying out cultural output and advocating for Chinese culture to go global. In addition, the country has a number of policies that support the development of AR, AI, and big data. This time, SDIC Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (a wholly-owned subsidiary of China National Development and Investment Corporation) has invested RMB 200 million in strategic investment. RealMax has received support from capital and market resources, and has also seen the development direction of the Chinese market.
While full of development opportunities, AR industry also faces many challenges. Sonny believes that the immaturity of technology is the biggest challenge facing the current AR industry. However, he is full of confidence in overcoming the current difficulties. Today, RealMax is working hard to promote AR applications in the vertical industry. They believe that AR has achieved 0 to 1 in various fields, and then it will develop from 1 to 100 under the market's promotion. They also look forward to the AR's finally being able to reach the consumer market.
At the same time, Realmax also carried out a number of industry acquisitions. In 2015, they acquired the Hong Kong AR underlying algorithm company called Realmax Technology, in addition to the American company 8las. In terms of content, they acquired the AR application platform development company Chengdu Weili Interactive and AR content platform company Xi'an M33D. Realmax also organized its own global developer competition. The previous article introduced the RealWear HTM-1 industrial wearable tablet PC. Realmax strategically invested in the industrial solution company WearNext in mid-2016, and the company subsequently joined the RealMax brand. Almost in the same period, Realmax also acquired Shenzhen Optics Technology Corp. Zhi Mao Technology. From the change in the timing of acquisitions, we also looked at the attitude of the Realmax team. "The SDK-based AR software business line is currently difficult to form a profitable scale," and switched to hardware.
We have seen that in recent years, Realmax's R&D and operation, and various industry development conditions have rapidly accumulated. But as early as 2016, when they accepted the visit with Jisheng Capital, they always looked for the B-side application of AR. Realmax will start from the education segment, and will also expand tourism, cultural and creative, medical, security, entertainment, e-commerce, film and video, and games. Perhaps they are at the end of B, especially in industrial applications, so that they get the favor of SDIC intelligence.
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