For God Knows What Reason Lytro Was Just Given $60 Million

Who here remembers Lytro?

I’m going to bet almost nobody… The Lytro Illum, Lytro’s most hyped product that was supposed to be revolutionary for the world of photography, was a major disappointment. They have not released any major consumer oriented product since the Illum.

And yet…

The Story

Lytro may have had some setbacks in 2016, but it appears to be onto something. Investors have noticed the potential of the company’s light field technology, so much that Lytro has raised another round of funding, bringing in $60 million in new capital. The lead investor is Blue Pool Capital, which is affiliated with Alibaba cofounders Jack Ma and Joseph Tsai, and there are plans to use the additional resources to bring Lytro’s technology to Asia.

…Lytro has abandoned its original plan of producing technology for consumer use and instead shifted towards the enterprise: not just filmmakers and artists, but also manufacturers that want to provide VR capabilities in their devices. This might include the likes of Foxconn, which has been a leading builder of iPhones — there have been rumors of the iPhone 8 supporting VR and augmented reality — or maybe helping Alibaba out to build out its version of Amazon Video.

Source: http://venturebeat.com/2017/02/15/lytro-raises-60-million-to-bring-light-field-vr-technology-into-asia/

I too base all of my investment decisions on hypotheticals and unproven products. *sarcasm alert

Let me remind you of how Lytro’s last product went…

If you can’t read that image;
It’s a screen-capture of an Amazon.com page showing the price of the Lytro Illum falling from $1563.02 on December 12, 2014 to $324.99 on September 18, 2016… a 79% drop in the price.

The Illum was plagued by software issues during its entire life and was a constant disappointment image quality wise.

Which is basically all that a modern camera is. Software and imaging hardware. And yet Lytro failed to deliver on both counts.

Some reviews

A number of reviewers have written about this camera’s shortcomings; low (4 MP) equivalent resolution, quirky desktop software, and the limited use case for this camera. All of these are, in fact, issues. At its original price of $1,600, I couldn’t justify buying it. But at $329, it seemed worth trying and I’m glad I bought it. I have only had it a few days and am still figuring out the best way to use its multi-focus technology, but I am very impressed with the underlying technology.

Source: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3Q370ZCCOTR7D/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00KAX40LM

Another one…

The quality is s***

Source: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1QPTL4AK5WNRT/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00KAX40LM

Now you tell me… would you really expect much from a company that took years to deliver an over hyped consumer camera that ended up being a bitter disappointment?

It took Lytro years to deliver a consumer camera and it’s taken it years after that to not even have a final product for the VR future that it’s supposedly been working on! To top it off, they aren’t even producing a product for a solid set of users. They simply imply the potential… Lytro might supply some hardware for a possible future iPhone that supports VR.

I mean really…