Oculus has tapped Fitbit COO Hans Hartmann as the company's new chief operating officer. Hartmann will be replacing Oculus founding COO Laird Malamed, as the latter assumes a new executive position in the company.
The announcement came via a tweet in which Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe welcomed Hartmann as the new COO.
I'm excited to welcome our new COO Hans Hartmann! He brings decades of hardware, manufacturing and supply chain experience to Oculus.
— Brendan Iribe (@brendaniribe) May 4, 2016
Hartmann has been with Fitbit since 2011. According to his profile on LinkedIn, he has 30 years of industry experience, with 15 of them earned at Hewlett-Packard and the other 15 at successful early stage companies. His expertise revolves around product development and launch; supply chain management; manufacturing management; contract negotiations; design; electronics manufacturing and test management; information technology; quality management; and leadership.
Hartmann has also held the titles of VP and SVP of Operations at a number of companies since 1995. These include JetFax, ConvergeNet, Wave7Optics, and Barco among others.
Iribe noted Hartmann's decades of experience in the field of hardware, manufacturing and supply chain will be seen with the same dedication now that he is with Oculus. Perhaps the move could allow the virtual reality company to finally keep up with its struggles in meeting the pre-order demands of consumers with the launch of the Rift VR headset.
Oculus Rift started accepting pre-orders in early January and promised to make its first shipments on March 28. The pre-order price was set at $599, with shipment available to 20 countries or regions.
Gamers can also expect more than 20 games to launch exclusively from Oculus Studios this year. These include titles such as The Climb by Crytek, Edge of Nowhere by Insomniac, and Rockband VR by Harmonix.
A couple of weeks ago, Tech Times reported that shipment delays for the Oculus Rift VR headsets caused a sharp increase on its price at eBay. Along with the VR headset of HTC, the prices ranged between $1,000 and $2,000.
Oculus has been under fire recently as a result of the shipment delays to pre-orders of its headsets. A number of customers have been waiting to receive their pre-ordered headsets since January. This remains true even after the company started shipping more than a month ago.
With Hartmann's appointment, hopefully things will start working out for both the company and VR fans.
