Samsung, Qualcomm and Google Will Make New Breakthroughs Through Mixed-reality Platforms

Samsung will enter a new chapter in its virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) business. (photo: dock. ist)

JAKARTA - Samsung will enter a new chapter in the virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) business. He, plans to embrace Google and Qualcomm on a mixed-reality platform that will arrive soon.

This unsurprising news was announced by Samsung at the Galaxy Unpacked 2023 event Thursday, February 2. Because, its competitor Apple will also release its first VR headset this year.

The partnership was further strengthened by the presence of Qualcomm CEO, Cristiano Amon, and Google's SVP of Android, Hiroshi Lockheimer along with Samsung's mobile division president TM Roh on the stage to announce the collaboration.

"This is more of a declarative announcement of how we are going to do right in trying to build an XR ecosystem," said Roh.

Roh revealed that Google and Qualcomm will play a role in the development of this upcoming mixed reality platform. Qualcomm will supply the processor, and Samsung might make some optimizations, as it did for the Galaxy S23 chip.

"Every player is leading in every category, and then we're going to be working very closely together across categories," Roh said.

Amon mentions Snapdragon XR technology that will power Samsung's products and Google's experience on mixed reality devices.

“We are working to create a new era of highly immersive digital experiences that blur the lines between our physical and digital worlds,” said Amon.

Meanwhile, Lockheimer stated that this collaboration is quite interesting, because it can change the way of interacting with people and information to get things done in the real world.

"Google has long invested in experiences and technologies in AR and VR. These technologies are integral to this new phase of computing because they can transform the way we interact with people and information to get things done in the real world," said Lockheimer.

“But delivering this next-generation experience requires state-of-the-art hardware and software. That's why our collaboration with Samsung and Qualcomm is so exciting."

Lockheimer highlights Google's efforts to add AR experiences to Android. He said Google is scaling ARCore to 1 billion Android devices. Apart from that, Google also supports AR search on YouTube, Google Maps, and Google Lens.

That said, neither Samsung, Qualcomm and Google said what products were in development nor did they provide a timeline for any upcoming mixed reality products or services.

For your information, mixed reality is a blanket term used to describe technologies that blend characteristics of VR and AR.

Where AR blends software with the real world by overlaying graphics over the user's environment, similar to Google Glass. In comparison, VR includes the wearer in a 360-degree virtual world, much like Meta Quest 2.

However, there's no telling how long we'll see Samsung-branded mixed reality headsets rocking Qualcomm technology and Google AR software in stores.

Because there is more and more competition in the market. Apple and Samsung aren't the only tech companies developing such devices. Meta, Microsoft, Sony, and HTC are either working on similar headsets or are already selling VR products.

The focus is more on consumption of VR content than anything else when it comes to commercially available headsets. This was quoted from CNET and BGR, Friday, February 3.