Qualcomm’s big augmented reality project with Samsung and Google is... glasses

The concern announced by Samsung, Qualcomm, and Google past twelvemonth is processing a brace of mixed world astute glasses that nexus to the wearer’s smartphone, according to Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon. “It’s going to beryllium a caller product,” Amon told CNBC News in a caller interview.

“What I truly expect to travel retired of this partnership, I privation everyone that has a telephone to spell bargain companion glasses to spell on with it,” said Amon. “I deliberation we request to get to the constituent that the glasses are going to beryllium nary antithetic than wearing a regular glasses oregon sunglasses. And past with that, we tin get scale.”

Information astir the task has been highly slim since the XR concern was announced back successful February 2023. While the companies ne'er specified what benignant of instrumentality they were moving on, astir rumors suggested it would beryllium a Samsung mixed-reality headset pitched arsenic an affordable rival to Apple’s $3,500 Vision Pro. Google has besides teased a pair of prototype AR glasses moving its upcoming Project Astra multimodal AI adjunct astatine the Google I/O lawsuit successful May.

Amon tells CNBC he’s “incredibly pleased” with the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses released past year, which are powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 chip, and that generative AI was the “ingredient that was missing” for enlargement successful the mixed-reality market. “AI is going to tally connected the device. It’s going to tally connected the cloud,” said Amon. “It’s going to tally immoderate successful the glass, immoderate successful the phone, but astatine the extremity of the day, there’s going to beryllium full caller experiences.”