BARCELONA–Every year at the MWC (Mobile World Congress) event in Barcelona, the world’s biggest telecom operators gather among the smartphone OEMs and chip vendors to show off their latest achievements. This year, many of the telcos coalesced around Qualcomm’s XR platform, Snapdragon Spaces. Seven of these leading wireless providers have announced plans to leverage Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Spaces platform to accelerate the growth of XR on Android.
Snapdragon Spaces recap
For those unfamiliar with Snapdragon Spaces, it is Qualcomm’s XR development platform, which was born out of the reality that Google has dropped the ball on Android for XR functions such as hand-tracking, simultaneous location and mapping (SLAM), and so on. Qualcomm built Snapdragon Spaces as a combination of the work it was already doing in the XR space and its acquisitions of Wikitude and Clay Air. This is important because Qualcomm is helping to create a common framework among all the different XR devices so that developers can do their work once—for Snapdragon Spaces—and still serve compatible headsets from many different makers. One way that Qualcomm is achieving this is by implementing and mandating the use of standards like OpenXR.
The latest development is that the OnePlus 11 is first phone to be labeled as “Snapdragon Spaces Ready.” This development is crucial because it shows that Qualcomm has finally established a framework within which an OEM has configured its devices to work with all of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Spaces headsets. This will improve interoperability and make attaching AR glasses to a phone considerably easier, and a better experience overall. Removing these kinds of friction points is critical for improving the uptake of new technology, for Qualcomm and its OEM partners alike.
Wireless operators embrace Snapdragon Spaces
Qualcomm has a long history of working with global operators on wireless technologies like 5G. Many operators expect that XR will be a primary driver of the next generation of cellular networks, so it makes sense that they would work with Qualcomm to lay the groundwork for future XR projects. Additionally, Qualcomm has the most momentum among chip suppliers in the XR space, which explains its success with Snapdragon Spaces so far—and why it is trying to get it to scale. As for scale—so far, so good: seven of the world’s leading global operators have announced their plans to leverage Snapdragon Spaces to bolster their XR offerings.
Qualcomm says that China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, KDDI, NTT QONOQ, T-Mobile, Telefonica and Vodafone are all working on new XR devices, experiences and developer initiatives revolving around Snapdragon Spaces. Across these different carriers, Qualcomm has a considerable amount of geographical diversity and hundreds of millions of potential customers for Snapdragon Spaces products.
These seven large wireless operators are a crucial gateway to the consumer because they have the resources to market and demonstrate new headsets and to help users onboard, whereas other companies might have a lot more trouble gaining traction. Additionally, these operators control the 5G pipes that feed these XR devices with content, and they are able to optimize the pipes for larger file downloads, as well as make sure that XR devices are properly provisioned and prioritized on the network for an optimal user experience.
New XR devices at MWC
In addition to the Snapdragon Spaces announcement, companies like Xiaomi announced their first AR glasses using Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon AR platform. Goertek also announced a reference design headset that looks very similar to Xiaomi’s in a lot of ways, including the limited optics. At MWC we also saw other AR headsets from companies like ZTE, but I can’t say whether those are Snapdragon Spaces-compatible as none of that was made clear at ZTE’s booth. TCL also showed off its own AR glasses with Snapdragon XR2, which it first announced at the start of this year at CES, along with a standalone VR headset that’s still in development. I believe that a lot of Chinese OEMs are trying to get something out in the market before Apple launches its XR offering later this year, mostly to gain some mindshare in the market and to be able to claim they came to market before Apple.
Wrap up
Qualcomm continues to move the industry forward with its countless ecosystem initiatives and attempts to make XR more accessible and appealling to a wide audience. I think that Qualcomm is right to target the big operators to get them more involved, but it remains unclear how the operators that have signed agreements with Qualcomm will improve the landscape in a meaningful way to change the status quo for the better. Although the operators have come along for the journey with the latest Snapdragon Spaces announcement, there is still much to be done to figure out the most salient applications for XR headsets.
Even if operators like China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile build XR devices and put them on their networks, they will still have to work with developers using Snapdragon Spaces on Android to make use of those headsets and 5G connectivity. Many of them are actively doing so today with various programs and applications that leverage XR technologies, but all of these programs need to increase their scale considerably if they are going to make any impact on overall market growth.
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