Qualcomm Partners With ByteDance on XR Devices Ecosystem
American telecommunications giant Qualcomm announced on Tuesday a new cooperation deal with ByteDance, the Beijing-based parent company of TikTok, at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. Under this arrangement, the two sides will cooperate in the development of hardware equipment, software platforms and developer tools. Furthermore, the partnership is mainly aimed at extended reality (XR) technology, with a goal of further developing the global XR ecosystem.
Qualcomm has previously reached cooperation with many XR software and hardware manufacturers. For example, VR headsets Meta Quest 2 use Qualcomm XR special computer chips. Last year, ByteDance acquired Pico, a VR manufacturer in China, for 5 billion yuan ($792 million), and its layout in the XR field also attracted industry attention.
After the two companies reached this cooperation, ByteDance’s subsequent Pico XR products will adopt the Qualcomm Snapdragon platform Spaces, thus opening the potential for space computing and metaverse-related products.
As Cristiano Amon, President and CEO of Qualcomm, pointed out, “This is an opportunity that may be as huge as the smartphone market, especially as augmented reality (AR) glasses become an extension of every smartphone.”
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Liang Rubo, CEO of ByteDance, expressed that, “We are committed to building solutions that empower developers and creators. We are very much looking forward to our Pico devices being equipped with the Snapdragon Spaces XR developer platform in the future.”
In addition to cooperating with ByteDance, Qualcomm also announced a 5G modem with built-in AI and Snapdragon Connect certification. The company revealed that it will continue to invest in mobile technologies throughout the next decade, including 5G, Bluetooth, audio and other fields. Among them, Snapdragon Connect is a certification standard for devices with high-end connection performance. Smartphones, automobiles and AR/VR headsets certified by it are equipped with high-end 5G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies.
