Meta and Qualcomm have announced they are teaming up to design customized chipsets for future iterations of its extended reality (XR) platform. The two companies signed an extensive multi-year partnership at the IFA 2022 in Berlin.
The partnership extends the existing relationship between the social networking giant and the American chipmaker. Qualcomm currently produces the Snapdragon XR2 that powers Meta’s Quest 2.
However, going forward, expect a more significant collaboration between the two companies’ engineering and product teams “to deliver next-generation platforms and core technologies to accelerate a fully realized metaverse.â€
The deal currently rules out any plans by Meta to fulfill its Metaverse ambitions with its own processor, at least in the short term, just like Microsoft, which also relies on Qualcomm for augmented reality (AR) chips, and unlike NVIDIAOpens a new window , Google, and Apple, all of which design their chips.
The Meta-Qualcomm partnership does, however, provide Menlo Park an opportunity to experiment with developing with Qualcomm, an established industry leader in chip design, and brings its staff a little bit closer to acquiring crucial experience.
Metaverse, which Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sees as the successor to the mobile internet, would require the development of an entire ecosystem of products and services, both in terms of software application and hardware.
David Chen, co-founder and CTO of Orbbec, wrote for Spiceworks, “From a hardware standpoint, the fulfillment of the metaverse will require three forms of technology.â€
“First, wholly accurate and digital duplication, via scanning or digital construction, will need to take place. Next, networks will need to render those physical environments in the cloud or on devices in real time, making them easy to visit. The third and most challenging will be display technologies that provide a convincing real-world experience.â€
Chen continued, “The devices and systems that enable this new era are well underway and, within a few years, will allow the metaverse to flourish. Processing power, rendering engines, display technologies, cellular networks and virtual content are all reaching new levels.â€
See More: Tech Giants Establish the Metaverse Standards Forum, But Apple Isn’t Among Them
Barring the last, i.e., virtual content, Meta has little expertise in others. So through the partnership with Qualcomm, Meta will aim to create a niche for itself, much like what Apple did with its internally-developed M1 and M2 chips for Macs and Google with its Tensor chip for smartphones, as well as other AI development services. Apple is also developing the underlying hardware for its upcoming VR product in-house.
“As we continue to build more advanced capabilities and experiences for virtual and augmented reality, it has become more important to build specialized technologies to power our future VR headsets and other devices,†Zuckerberg said. “Unlike mobile phones, building virtual reality brings novel, multi-dimensional challenges in spatial computing, cost, and form factor. These chipsets will help us keep pushing virtual reality to its limits and deliver awesome experiences.â€
Besides XR, both Qualcomm and Meta are working on AR products. The former clarified to CNET that the partnership does not encompass its AR-platform Snapdragon Spaces and that Meta’s XR products will be developed on Meta’s Presence Platform.
Meta’s Reality Labs division, responsible for AR/VR/XR and Metaverse development, posted a loss of $2.806 billionOpens a new window in Q2 2022 against earnings of $452 million. The company expects revenue from Reality Labs to slide further in Q3 2022, despite the rising demand for AR/VR headsets (jumped 241.6% in Q1 2022Opens a new window ), of which Quest commands the lion’s share.
However, Meta remains optimistic, given it seeks to pour in additional investment in Reality Labs and is now partnering with Qualcomm. To offset AR/VR R&D costs, Meta relies on its vast advertising business, which is presently stifled by privacy-related features introduced in Apple’s iOS 14.5 onwards, not to mention global macroeconomic headwinds.
Meta has responded by jacking up the prices of Quest 2 by $100 starting August 1, 2022. Quest 2 now costs $399.99 and $499.99 for the 128 GB and 256 GB versions, respectively.
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