ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is preparing to enter the US market with another product, and the company has begun assembling a team of Beko employees on the West Coast, focusing largely on content licensing as well as marketing its devices to US consumers.
The company is also communicating with VR content producers, and is willing to pay a lot of money for VR games and experiences.
Biko currently has more than 40 job listings for positions in the Bay Area, Seattle and San Diego. Many of the positions the company is looking to fill are related to a content-focused organization called Beko Studios.
These include the President of Pico Studios, the Head of Virtual Reality Game Strategy - Pico Studios, the Head of the External Content Ecosystem - Pico Studios and the COO of this organization.
Beko is also looking to fill a number of technical positions related to virtual reality hardware and software development and research and development.
At least one job also indicates that this new hiring drive is not just about bringing American talent into the company, and the head of consumer sales is responsible for sales and marketing of the overall Beko product in the US consumer market, according to the job title.
Beko was one of a number of Chinese startups in the field of virtual reality with a promising product. But there was little, if any, chance of bringing it to Western audiences before Bitedance took over in August. It is very difficult to compete with Quest 2, especially if you do not have as much cash as Meta.
Previously, Biko had a small team in the United States. But it was mainly focused on sales of enterprises outside China.
The company introduced its latest eyewear, the Pico Neo 3 Link, in Europe last month. "We have entered the European consumer VR headset market," she said in a tweet.
ByteDance is preparing to expand the virtual reality unit Beko
ByteDance has also recently begun moving some of its American employees from TikTok to Beko, including executive director of business development Sally Wang, who has been working on content partnerships for the social video app.
Since the acquisition, Beko has redoubled its efforts to license content for virtual reality goggles. According to the information, the company is willing to spend a lot of money on virtual reality content, including content that has been licensed to Meta.
Beko's website lists games like Superhot VR, Red Matter, Eleven Table Tennis and Arizona Sunshine — all games that have succeeded in Quest.
But there is a question about the ability of ByteDance to sell Beko glasses at a price close to the price of Meta glasses. IDC recently estimated that Meta has sold nearly 15 million Quest 2 since the glasses were introduced in late 2020, bringing it in line with major gaming platforms.
One of the reasons for the success of the Quest 2 is its $300 price tag, which is largely due to the fact that Meta has no intention of making money with virtual reality devices.
Instead, the company is betting on metavirus as its next major growth engine, and sees hardware as a way to get there.
Pico's Neo 3 Link sells for 450 euros (about $480) in Europe. These glasses have a newer Qualcomm processor than the Quest 2.
But it is not certain that consumers would be willing to pay that much money for it. Especially if they are new to VR and don't care much about hardware specs.
However, it appears that ByteDance is still around for the long haul, ready to rival Meta's immersive computing efforts on multiple fronts.
Beko is also looking to hire several tactile engineers and waveguide design scientists. That means all the functionality needed to build the kind of advanced AR and VR hardware that Meta works on.