Here’s the thing: one company stands alone with a multitude of OEMs supported by its platform. Every erstwhile Apple headset competitor, or coattails-rider, needs Qualcomm, and it doesn’t really matter whether the Reality Pro is a success, or not, Qualcomm stands to win from the feeding frenzy around its launch. I think Qualcomm stands to gain more than Apple, although it may not be reflected in the company’s bottom line. There’s just not enough evidence of the kind of volumes that would be needed to make AR/VR/MR sales impactful to Qualcomm’s financials, and definitely not for Apple’s gargantuan finances.
And if Apple does succeed in generating sales and meeting expectations, even better, because there’s only one other company with the reach, albeit through a network of OEMs, and third party developers, and that’s Qualcomm. If there’s one loser in all this then it has to be Meta: if Apple succeeds, Meta looks like it blew way too much money on the market, and if Apple fails then it will definitely look like Meta has overplayed its hand.
Qualcomm’s AR/VR/MR Universe
Qualcomm has a long history in the augmented reality (AR) sector, dating back over 13 years when it helped pioneer smartphone AR. Jumping a few years ahead, the company’s CEO, Cristiano Amon, at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2022, discussed a strategic vision of how the company’s Snapdragon chips and Spaces XR Developer Platform were planning to play a major role in the emerging global metaverse market, as it was hyped then. Bytedance also joined hands with Qualcomm on AR development at MWC 2022, having acquired Pico in 2021.
Take a leap to last week, at AWE 2023, Qualcomm was touting new features for its Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform to speed up the creation of an extended reality (XR) ecosystem spanning multiple devices, including headsets. This was part of Qualcomm’s effort to help pioneer a future where head-worn devices become more prevalent and more open, obviously a nod to the intended audience of the gathered faithful.
It was, an impressive showcase of where the company’s vision has take it. The latest release of the Snapdragon Spaces SDK includes a feature called Dual Render Fusion. This feature allows developers to transform their 2D mobile applications into immersive, world-scale 3D experiences. It doesn’t require any previous XR experience from developers, making it more accessible to a larger pool, and is said to fuse the simplicity and familiarity of smartphones with the capacity of AR glasses to enable immersive experiences.
The Snapdragon Spaces platform already includes a large community of developers and brands, such as Red Bull and Kittch. It has also announced the extension of Snapdragon Spaces support to include several new XR devices, including the Oppo MR Glasses, as well as all-in-one AR devices from DigiLens and TCL RayNeo. Furthermore, Qualcomm Ventures, as part of the Snapdragon Metaverse Fund, has made investments in various XR companies including Survios, EnlightXR, and Tangle, adding to previous investments in Tripp and Echo3D.
