Samsung To Develop New XR Hardware In Partnership With Qualcomm, Google

Throughout today’s Samsung Unpacked event, Samsung declared plans to produce new ‘Extended Reality’ (XR) hardware in partnership with Google and Qualcomm.

This new XR system was significantly from the primary emphasis of the function, which centered all over the new Samsung Galaxy S23 Extremely cellular phone and other hardware bulletins. The company’s revived desire in the VR/AR marketplace was only briefly pointed out on phase in the course of the keynote, with additional details given in interviews previous the celebration.

Midway through the keynote, Samsung President TM Roh introduced Cristiano Amon, President and CEO of Qualcomm, and Hiroshi Lockheimer, SVP Platforms and Ecosystems at Google, on phase. Amon spoke about Qualcomm’s ongoing partnership with Samsung, although also indicating that the corporation is working with Samsung on new XR technological innovation:

“We’re also collaborating to deliver upcoming technology encounters to other Galaxy items, which includes laptops, tablets, XR and more. And in XR, we’re operating to build a new era of highly immersive digital activities that blur the traces among our actual physical and digital worlds. With our Snapdragon XR engineering, along with Samsung’s amazing items and Google’s encounters, we have the basis to make this possibilities of reality [sic] and push the long run of the spatial net.”

In an interview with the Washington Submit previous the occasion, Roh gave some minimal specifics about the ongoing partnership and Samsung’s XR programs:

“For the chipset, it is likely to be a strategic collaboration with Qualcomm. The components will be us. And the computer software will be furnished by Google.

For the ecosystem, we have been trying to determine which platform to work with, and in the close, we made a decision that it was heading to be Google.”

In accordance to the Write-up, that previous level on the ecosystem refers to a “new, previously unannounced edition of the Android operating technique intended specially to power equipment this sort of as wearable shows.”

Roh “would not elaborate” on the first product or service of this XR system would be, only hinting that it’s “getting there” and “not also far away.” Roh also unveiled that this new XR thrust from Samsung would include things like services partnerships with Meta and Microsoft, but did not supply further more information.

Even though Samsung is branding this XR announcement as a ‘new’ force into the current market, it actually confirms the company’s rumored return to the VR/AR market immediately after some early contributions very last decade. Most notably, Samsung partnered with Fb in the 2010s to deliver Gear VR, a sequence of smartphone-dependent VR headsets that have been successfully the very first commonly-shipped VR merchandise for customers. Samsung also released the Odyssey, a Laptop VR Windows Blended Reality headset, in 2017 and its successor, the Odyssey+, a yr afterwards in 2018.

In 2020, a layout patent indicated Samsung might be working on a new bug-shaped Odyssey headset. In March 2022, reviews suggested Samsung was doing the job on its own AR headset, followed by stories very last December indicating the organization prepared to deliver out an AR/VR headset to developers in 2023.

“We consider that the ecosystem has to be relatively completely ready for the products to be introduced and for the solution to be successful as well,” Roh told the Washington Put up, talking about why the company’s XR announcement concentrated on the Google-Qualcomm partnership, and not a item. “There have been quite a few attempts by other corporations so far, but not as productive as experienced been hoped for the reason that possibly the ecosystem was not as all set as it must have been.”