While Amazon is one of the largest tech companies around, the company isn’t quite known for its prowess in the field of virtual reality and extended reality. It is now speculated that LG is interested in Amazon because of the 200 million strong Amazon Prime Video customers who subscribe to the OTT service. LG sees this large customer base as a potential market for the company’s upcoming XR products.
Given that Amazon doesn’t have the equivalent to Meta’s Horizon OS, it is likely that LG will use a modified version of Android to power its future XR devices. LG could also pave an independent path and come up with an XR operating system of its own, given that the company already uses its WebOS platform for smart TVs.
It is pertinent to note that the potential partnership brewing between Amazon and LG is yet to be confirmed by either company. It would be interesting to see the direction the partnership moves in if the news, indeed, turns out to be true.
LG’s interest in getting its XR game correct is understandable, given that it is not the only electronics major involved in developing such products. LG’s arch rival Samsung is also heavily invested in these devices, and had even announced a similar deal with Meta in 2022. Samsung is also investing in a production facility for manufacturing microLEDs, an advanced display technology that is widely used in AR and VR devices.
