What Display Daily thinks: Courting all the itty bitty VR, AR, MR suppliers is a pain because they often lack the resources and the funding of their grander visions. Courting Meta may get you a handshake but you might have to count your fingers afterwards. Finding an outlet for your AR/VR strategy isn’t easy.
Qualcomm has the only answer right now. The company’s platform is powering practically every device out, except the Apple Vision Pro, and at this stage, I am going to take bets on how easily that product will find a graceful exit in the coming year.
I would hate to bet my company’s fortunes on smart glasses, I really would, but not everyone feels that way. So, let’s look at it positively, Qualcomm has basically idiot-proofed the design process for a eyewear that has just enough AR to make it high-tech, some decent audio, and can act like a virtual set of earbuds as you chat to your AI bot. Pretty much the sum total of future human existence and social interaction if everything works out for our robot overlords.
Idiot-proofing the design of AR/VR devices is no mean feat and it is really only possible because Qualcomm has it all, including the vital communications parts, in neat little mobile packages, the legacy of one of the greatest concentrations of mobile IP. Hook up a set of displays around any Qualcomm prototype for any form factor and you are pretty much good to go. Why work so hard trying to figure out a market that no one seems to have a clear handle on. Even Meta had to copy Apple at its recent pitch for Quest 3 to make itself feel fresh. And the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, coming on the heels of Amazon’s Carrera smart glasses launch recently, signals that everyone, and I mean everyone, should get it into the smart glasses businesses now. Idiot-proof, like I said.
Qualcomm Launches Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 Platform and Snapdragon AR1 Gen1 for Smart Glasses
Qualcomm used the timing of Meta’s Connect event, where Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the Quest 3 and Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, to launch the platforms that it built for them, namely the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 and Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1.
The Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 Platform is engineered to provide MR and VR capabilities within a single chip architecture. It should promise thinner and more comfortable headsets that eliminate the need for external battery packs. Qualcomm claims the integrated Adreno GPU is about 2.5x better in performance than previous iteration, and has 50% more power efficiency. The integrated Hexagon NPU is supposed to have 8x the AI performance capability of the XR2 Gen 1. There’s a lot of specs in here that are aligning with the expectations that Meta has put on the Quest 3, and also, let’s be fair, kind of snubbing the nose at Apple’s Vision Pro, which may do some of these things better, but at a much greater price and with an outcome that may be not that much better.
More interestingly, at least for me, is the Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 Platform, which is uniquely designed for power optimization within the thermal constraints of smart glasses. It’s designed to let users capture, share, or live-stream hands-free directly from their glasses, uses on-device AI enhances audio quality, facilitates visual search, and enables real-time translation. It also supports a visual heads-up display for consumption of content within the user’s field of view. To get all of the seeming power and connectivity into the form factor, and to have it showcase in a Ray-Ban design was pretty cool. I may not like the idea of unfettered recording by anyone and everyone, a real intrusion into everyone’s personal space, no matter how you try to cut it, but as a piece of technology, with the opportunity to become a tick-box as a feature in a Lenscrafters’ display case? Yeah, it’ll do.
The Alt-Reality industry should thank their lucky stars that Meta is spending so much money on one man’s dream to get into everyone’s heads. The result here is that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 is a pretty big leap over Gen 1, and is going to make it that much easier to sell against Apple’s heavy handed product with something more accessible and affordable (if Meta can do it, anyone can now). And, it has given us what could be the actual killer product for the market, the Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1. Once the thought of the creepy cam is lost in some fancy eyewear frames, it’s an easy entry into the market for any eyewear product. Slap a decent brand on it, make it sound and look Italian, you some decent audio, connectivity, and that hint of AI, plus enough heads up display tech to add that sense of wonder. It’s about all you need to make an Alt-Reality product that everyone can get behind and understand. Kind of like a heads up display in the car with Siri telling you where to take the next turn. It’s not that the application is new, but it is kind of neat, and tidy of Qualcomm, to put it all into a very simple development kit.
If Qualcomm can’t sell millions of AR1 Gen 1 chips then you can start to shorten the odds on the future of the Alt-Reality market. I mean, it’s idiot-proof so, if there’s a use-case for it then go make the product, the hard work has been done for you, and start selling it.
