So, if you haven’t heard of Nokia’s OZO camera, here is a brief overview.
Ozo is touted as the world’s first professional Virtual Reality camera. As you can see from the image it can capture 360° spherical video at 30 FPS and 360×360 surround sound via it’s 8 2K cameras.
Nokia just announced that they are now selling Ozo in the Chinese market and with that press release they also announced new global pricing of $45K USD (€40K Euros). This is down from $60K that it was priced so far.
So Nokia is entering the Chinese market with a new global pricing that is 25% reduced from it’s original pricing
We have also previously seen that there is a lot of activity from major players like Google to be in the VR camera business. For example this headline in The Verge – “Google is working with IMAX to build a cinema-quality Jump VR camera”
If we checkout Google’s VR page, it shows how it wants to be in the commercial as well as the consumer sector and with collaorations with IMAX, Jump, and Go Pro; Google has the deep pockets and the knowledge base to become a competitors to Noika’s Ozo.
Google lists that the Jump camera rig consists of 16 camera modules in a circular array and it costs $15K.
Both Google-Gopro Jump and Nokia Ozo seem to be aimed at the professionals but at the same time there are also good, affordable alternatives aimed at the consumer market, eg: Vuze VR. Going on sale at $799, it puts VR in the hands of budding professionals who can’t afford the expensive Gopros and Ozos but also for families who want to record their own activites.
Albeit $799 might be still costsly for VR to take off in the consumer market but these are really early stages, and I can imaging a sub $500 VR camera rig in a year or two.
Few final thoughts: