The head of Qualcomm spoke about the development of mixed reality glasses together with Samsung and Google

Qualcomm is working with Samsung and Google to develop mixed reality glasses that can connect to a smartphone—the three companies have decided to take a different approach from Apple’s Vision Pro headset. The CEO of the chip developer, Cristiano Amon, spoke about this in an interview with CNBC.

Last year, Google, Samsung and Qualcomm launched a partnership to develop Mixed Reality (MR) technology, which combines the capabilities of virtual (VR) and augmented reality (AR), allowing digital images to be superimposed on real-world objects. The technology will give people “new experiences,” Mr. Amon promised. He recommended that everyone who has a phone buy glasses to go with it.

As an example, he cited Meta✴ Ray-Ban smart glasses, which look almost no different from regular glasses, but connect to the phone wirelessly and work with the Llama AI model.

Qualcomm has decided to rely on mixed reality technology – this direction will help the company diversify its business and reduce its dependence on the smartphone market. It has a Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 chip specifically for smart glasses. The company emphasizes that its processors offer local data processing, not just transferring it to the cloud. However, in fact, AI will work partly in glasses, partly in a phone and partly in the cloud.

This year, shipments of virtual and augmented reality headsets will amount to 9.7 million units, while 1.23 billion smartphones will be shipped, analysts say. The main limiting factor for the growth of devices in this category is that they are bulky and inconvenient. The turning point, according to Mr. Amon, will be the moment when mixed reality headsets no longer differ in size from regular glasses or sunglasses.

There are almost no other details about the project. Earlier, the head of Samsung’s mobile division, Tae Moon Roh (TM Roh), promised that a new “mixed reality platform” would be announced within a year.