Near-term and futuristic use of haptics will be experienced across a wide range of applications
SAN JOSE, Calif. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — February 21, 2014 — Immersion Corporation (Nasdaq: IMMR), the leading developer and licensor of touch feedback technology, will be unveiling new demonstrations at Mobile World Congress designed to show how tactile technology will enhance user experience in next-generation mobile and wearable devices. The demos highlight applications of haptics in user-created video, tactile ads and entertainment, wearables, mobile user interfaces and gaming. The company will showcase its technology at GSMA Mobile World Congress 2014, February 24 – 27 in Barcelona. Immersion will be located at App Planet Hall, Stand 8.1G41.
“Mobile World Congress is a great opportunity for us to pull back the curtain and share new technologies we’re investing in to offer haptics more broadly to the mobile ecosystem, including OEMs, advertisers, developers, content owners and publishers,” explains Dennis Sheehan, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Immersion. “Our experiential demonstrations use technologies that will reach consumers over the next 1-3 years; we’re offering visitors an opportunity to experience how haptics will transform mobile video, ads, entertainment and communications into immersive, multi-sensory experiences.”
Tactile Effects in User-Created Video
Tactile effects offer consumers a new way to customize and enhance mobile videos. With tactile effects, users can engage the sense of touch to exaggerate, emphasize and intensify physical feats, incorporate personal commentary and express emotions in personal videos. Imagine a user adding a haptic heartbeat to a video of a new puppy, or the realistic sensation of rolling up a ramp to a skateboard video. With new Immersion technology, tactile effects can be added into user captured video and shared with others, who can then feel the experience on their own device.
In addition to on-device editing demonstrations, Mobile World Congress visitors will be able to preview Immersion’s research and development efforts in sensor-based tactile technology. With sensor-based haptics, data captured from gyros and accelerometers affixed to athletes are translated into haptic tracks, which are then embedded into mobile video. The unprecedented sense of realism offered by haptics captured by sensor data allows viewers to feel the pavement underneath a skateboarder, the rev of the engine in motocross or the impact of a crash from a BMX rider.
Tactile Ads and Entertainment
User research has shown that incorporating tactile effects into mobile ads and entertainment results in increased key performance indicators, including brand perception, intent to purchase and user engagement. Additionally, tactile ads and entertainment have been shown to increase long-term recall of content, while providing an opportunity for advertisers and content owners to direct attention and alter media experience. At Mobile World Congress, Immersion will be demonstrate the latest examples of tactile ads and entertainment, and will preview tools the company is developing for advertisers, publishers and agencies to incorporate tactile effects into mobile content.
Wearables
Tactile feedback provides personal, private and discreet communication between a wearable device and its user. By using Immersion technology, OEMs can create a unique language of communication, based on distinct tactile effects, to provide rich meaningful information to users. Demonstrations will let visitors feel a wide range of use cases for tactile communications in wearables including rich alerts and notifications, smart home controls, health and fitness applications, and gaming.
Mobile UX and Gaming
Immersion’s tactile technology provides OEMs and game developers the opportunity to create a user experience that is branded and distinct, as well as more intuitive. Seemingly simple tactile enhancements go a long way to reduce user frustration and create a rich, delightful mobile user experience. From chat and messaging applications to camera and video capture, text entry, utilities, and connectivity, Immersion will be demonstrating novel ways that tactile effects can enhance mobile UX. Also on display will be third-party applications using Immersion’s Haptic SDK for Android game developers. The Haptic SDK offers tools and effect libraries that make it easy to incorporate tactile effects into Android games. To date, it has been used to enhance thousands of Android games which, on aggregate, have been downloaded over 80 million times.
About Immersion ( www.immersion.com)
Founded in 1993, Immersion (NASDAQ: IMMR) is the leading innovator in haptic technology; the company's touch feedback solutions deliver a more compelling sense of the digital world. Using Immersion's high-fidelity haptic systems, partners can transform user experiences with unique and customizable touch feedback effects; excite the senses in games, videos and music; restore "mechanical" feel by providing intuitive and unmistakable confirmation; improve safety by overcoming distractions while driving or performing a medical procedure; and expand usability when audio and visual feedback are ineffective. Immersion's TouchSense technology provides haptics in mobile phone, automotive, gaming, medical and consumer electronics products from world-class companies. With over 1,400 issued or pending patents in the U.S. and other countries, Immersion helps bring the digital universe to life. Hear what we have to say at blog.immersion.com.
Forward-looking Statements
This press release contains "forward-looking statements" that involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they never materialize or prove incorrect, could cause the results of Immersion Corporation and its consolidated subsidiaries to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.
All statements, other than the statements of historical fact, are statements that may be deemed forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements regarding the benefits of Immersion’s demonstrations, that the demonstrations will perform as intended, Immersion’s anticipation that the technologies embodied in the demonstrations will reach consumers in the future, and that Immersion will make available tools currently under development or continue their development.
Immersion's actual results might differ materially from those stated or implied by such forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties associated with Immersion's business, which include, but are not limited to: unanticipated difficulties and challenges encountered in product development efforts by Immersion and its licensees; unanticipated difficulties and challenges encountered in implementation efforts by Immersion’s licensees; adverse outcomes in any future intellectual property-related litigation and the costs related thereto; the effects of the current macroeconomic climate; delay in or failure to achieve commercial demand for Immersion's products or third party products incorporating Immersion's technologies; and a delay in or failure to achieve the acceptance of touch feedback as a critical user experience. Many of these risks and uncertainties are beyond the control of Immersion.
For a more detailed discussion of these factors, and other factors that could cause actual results to vary materially, interested parties should review the risk factors listed in Immersion's most current Form 10-Q, which is on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements in this press release reflect Immersion's beliefs and predictions as of the date of this release. Immersion disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements as a result of financial, business, or any other developments occurring after the date of this release.
The use of the word "partners" in this press release does not mean legal partners.
Immersion, the Immersion logo, and TouchSense are trademarks of Immersion Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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