Samsung’s next frontier: XR in partnership with Qualcomm, Google

SAN FRANCISCO – Samsung Electronics Co. is teaming up with Qualcomm Technologies Inc. and Google LLC to venture into the extended reality (XR) device market, forecast to grow to $1.39 trillion by 2030.

TM Roh, Samsung’s mobile business president and chief, said during Wednesday's Galaxy Unpacked 2023 event that the company is working with the US heavyweights on new XR products and the ecosystem to nurture them.

“In partnership with Qualcomm and Google, we are working on a next-generation XR form factor,” he said at the forum, where the South Korean tech giant also unveiled its latest Galaxy S23 series premium smartphones and Galaxy Book3 laptop computers.

“The three of us, who have deep trust in each other, are going to change the future of the mobile world with shared XR technologies.”

Extended reality, or XR, is a blanket term for a handful of related technologies that include virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR).

Qualcomm Chief Executive Cristiano Amon and Hiroshi Lockheimer, a Google senior vice president, also appeared on stage to jointly announce their collaboration.

“An exciting space where Google has been investing in for a long time across both experiences and technology is AR and VR,” said Lockheimer.

“These technologies are integral to the new phase of computing as it can change the way we interact with people and information to get things done in the real world.”

Qualcomm chief Amon said the company aims to create a new era of highly immersive XR experiences that blur the lines between physical and digital worlds.

XR HEADSET, FIRST JOINT PRODUCT

While playing up its collaboration with Qualcomm and Google, Samsung didn’t offer concrete ideas about the trio's first XR product.

However, industry watchers said Samsung will develop XR headsets built on Qualcomm’s chipsets and Google’s Android operating software.

The collaboration makes sense since the three companies already work together on smartphones, they said. Samsung builds the hardware of its Galaxy line of smartphones, while Qualcomm supplies the processors and Google manages the software's underlying Android OS.

Samsung is no stranger to wearable screens such as VR headsets.

In 2014, the company entered the market in partnership with Oculus VR to launch the Gear VR headset, which used its smartphone as both the display and to provide computing power.

After discontinuing Gear VR in 2018, however, Samsung has been notably absent from the VR world.

TO CHALLENGE APPLE, META IN XR COMPETITION

The Samsung announcement comes at a time of increasing interest in virtual, augmented and mixed reality.

Apple Inc., Samsung’s longtime rival, is widely expected to unveil its first XR device, reportedly a pricey mixed reality headset, in the second half of this year.

Last November, Meta Platforms Inc., the parent of Facebook, unveiled its new high-end mixed reality headset, Meta Quest Pro.

The US tech giant said it is betting its future on the creation of a metaverse – a virtual world where people can carry out their everyday lives, in the form of avatars, as well as explore fantasy virtual spaces.

Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg met with senior Samsung Electronics officials in November to discuss a possible business tie-up, including joint work on the VR headset, Meta Quest Pro.

Other tech firms, including Amazon and Microsoft, are also developing VR and AR devices to build their own metaverses.

Samsung Display Co., a unit of Samsung Electronics, is building a production facility for Micro OLEDs, a next-generation display technology, suitable for XR wearable devices, industry sources said in December.

According to market tracker Counterpoint Research, XR headset shipments worldwide are expected to grow from 18 million units in 2022 to 36 million in 2023, rising further to 1 billion by 2030.

Consulting firm PwC forecasts the size of the global XR market to grow to 1,700 trillion won ($1.39 trillion) by 2030 from an estimated 540 trillion won in 2025.

Write to Ji-Eun Jeong and Ki-Yeol Seo at jeong@hankyung.com

In-Soo Nam edited this article.