James Stephen

Cristiano Amon, CEO of Qualcomm has announced it is designing AR smart glasses with Samsung and Google that can be powered by your smartphone.

The partnership itself is not new. Qualcomm partnered with Google and Samsung at the beginning of the year to strengthen XR use cases for headset and smart glasses with the help of its XR2+ Gen 2 chipset.

Amon shared the plans with the US business news channel CNBC, which observed that Qualcomm was taking a different approach to Apple, a major competitor in the smart glasses industry.

Apple’s latest mixed reality headset ‘Vision Pro’ was debuted in June at Apple Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) 2024 and includes compatibility with about 1.5 million iOS and iPadOS applications, but it runs independently of a user’s smartphone.

During his interview with CNBC, Amon appeared to be holding onto big sales expectations for its AR smart glasses co-creation: “It’s going to be a new product, it’s going to be new experiences.

“But what I really expect to come out of this partnership, I want everyone that has a phone to go buy companion glasses to go along with it.

Amon continued: “AI is going to run on the device. It’s going to run on the cloud. It’s going to run some in the glass, some in the phone, but at the end of the day, there’s going to be whole new experiences.”

Qualcomm/Samsung/Google AR Smart Glasses

To give an idea of what the AR smart glasses partners Qualcomm, Samsung, and Google have in mind, the CEO of Qualcomm pointed to Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, which look like ordinary sunglasses but are wirelessly connected to smartphones.

They also include built-in cameras and a voice assistant that utilises Meta’s Llama AI, which may mean we can expect.

One of the most notable differences in a side-by-side comparison between Meta’s Ray-Bans and Apple’s Vision Pro is the size and weight, with the Vision Pro having a much bigger and bulkier design than the Ray-Ban smart glasses.

How many customers will buy a new mobile phone to accompany their purchase of the Qualcomm/Samsung/Google smart glasses remains to be seen, but if their popularity reflect those of Meta’s latest generation of smart glasses then it could be a huge success.

The new Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses smashed sales expectations in July this year.

Apple, on the other hand, released its quarterly earnings at the beginning of August, but it did not produce any sales figures for the Vision Pro. It wouldn’t be wise to leap to conclusions, particularly as it did beat analyst expectations, with sales for the period ending 30 June were $85.8bn, up five percent year on year.

CNBC also calls attention to the relatively small market size of virtual and augmented reality headsets compared to that of smartphones. The International Data Corporation believes 9.7 million VR and AR headsets will be shipped this year, which is far smaller than the 1.23 billion smartphones forecast to be sold.

Amon believes that the design is key to growing sales:

“I think we need to get to the point that the glasses are going to be no different than wearing a regular glasses or sunglasses. And then with that, we can get scale”.

Last month, Qualcomm joined the AR Alliance, a group that brings together leaders in the XR industry to drive innovation and success.