Snapdragon at AWE 2024: Building the immersive future, together

Qualcomm Technologies took the stage to unveil the latest innovations and demonstrate our commitment to the XR industry. We showcased our latest XR hardware, giving attendees the opportunity to experience the technologies that will shape the future of spatial computing, such as wireless augmented reality (AR) glasses, and 4K virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR). These devices are a testament to our commitment to innovation and our desire to empower developers to create new and exciting XR experiences.

Alex Katouzian, senior vice president and group GM of mobile, compute and XR at Qualcomm Technologies, opened the keynote by outlining the key foundational technologies and latest innovations that help position Qualcomm Technologies as a leader and driving force in the XR industry. He provided insights on how our deep technology integration and ecosystem collaborations make Snapdragon the platform of choice for XR original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). 

Snapdragon XR enables new levels of immersion and interactivity, and we’ve worked with top companies to bring more than 80 commercial devices to market and received more than 20 industry awards.

Snapdragon XR: Leveraging Snapdragon technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and multi-device capabilities

During our keynote, Alex highlighted three key areas that Snapdragon technology is impacting XR: intelligent computing, seamless multi-device experiences and generative AI.

As we have evolved from a connected processing company to providing intelligent computing solutions, Snapdragon technology has been at the center. Now powering billions of devices — across smartphones, PCs, gaming, XR devices, wearables, vehicles and more — our CPU, neural processing unit (NPU), GPU and image signal processing (ISP) technologies are critical to the development of next generation personal, built-for-AI devices. Through deep integration and collaboration with major operating system (OS) providers, Snapdragon is a full system-level integrator, enabling seamless cross-device experiences for consumers.

Generative AI, particularly through Qualcomm Technologies’ leadership in on-device AI, is revolutionizing our interaction with technology by making it faster, more efficient, personal and secure. We believe an optimal way to engage with AI assistants is via headworn XR devices like smart glasses. Alex highlighted the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, powered by Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 Platform, noting that all-day, lightweight smart glasses with heads-up displays could enrich user experiences and be the eyes and ears for our generative AI assistants.

Growing the XR ecosystem

The next key theme for us at AWE is our commitment to growing the XR ecosystem by supporting developers through our developer-first mindset and strong industry collaborations. Through Snapdragon Spaces, OEMs and developers have been commercializing solutions that expand the XR ecosystem.

Since its announcement in 2021, we’ve had thousands of developers leverage Snapdragon Spaces across a variety of use cases. In particular, we’ve seen notable enterprise adoption of Snapdragon Spaces. We now have over 40 of the top enterprise independent software vendors (ISVs) supporting Snapdragon Spaces, giving companies immersive solutions for training, education, remote collaboration and more. 

Since the debut of the XR industry, Qualcomm Technologies has been playing a key role in its adoption and acceleration. We are committed to driving the development of interoperable XR solutions and fostering innovation throughout the global ecosystem to enable immersive technology.

Hardware powered by Snapdragon XR

At our booth at AWE 2024, we showcased two of the latest XR devices that support Snapdragon Spaces and demonstrate the capabilities of our latest Snapdragon technology.

• QonoQ XR Glasses: As the first wireless augmented reality glasses powered by Snapdragon AR2 Gen 1 Platform, they connect wirelessly to a Sharp smartphone powered by Snapdragon, offering both consumer and enterprise applications.
• Sony’s Mixed Reality Device: Leveraging Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 Platform, this device seamlessly merges the real and virtual worlds, delivering a truly immersive MR experience enabling 4K resolution, real-time spatial mapping and high-resolution displays.

We also featured other XR devices powered by Snapdragon from Emdoor, Meta, Lenovo, RayNeo, Rokid, XREAL and others. These are just the latest additions to a growing portfolio of spatial computing devices with our technology and a testament to the incredible potential of Snapdragon XR.

What’s next?

We have a multi-year VR and MR agreement with Meta, and we are working together to expand the Meta Horizon OS to new OEM partners.

As announced on stage at AWE, Snapdragon Spaces will be forward-compatible with the upcoming XR platform built through collaboration with Google and Samsung, further growing the capabilities and features Snapdragon Spaces developers can access.

Because we see huge potential in industries such as sports and entertainment, we also expanded our collaborations beyond tech players. This includes forming the XR Sports Alliance among Qualcomm Technologies, Accedo and HBS. This initiative will help accelerate knowledge gathering, tech advancements and time-to-market for XR sports services.

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