Plans for Qualcomm’s phone-connected AR headset hint at the future of Google and Apple

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Apple’s eagerly awaited unveiling of its mixed reality headset is only a matter of days away, but Qualcomm has announced more AR/VR moves ahead of Apple’s WWDC event. At AWE, an AR-focused developer conference taking place May 31 to June 2 in San Jose, California, chipmaker Qualcomm outlined new steps for how headsets and glasses might work better with phones. This is exactly where brands like Apple and Google need to go next.

Qualcomm has been working on software that connects AR glasses and Android phones with certain Qualcomm chips for years, under an infrastructure called Snapdragon Spaces. The company’s latest feature, Dual Render Fusion, aims to make it easier for Android apps already on phones to add AR capabilities that could migrate to connected glasses.

Read more: Mixed reality headsets from Apple: What we expect

Qualcomm’s chips are already in most XR (AR/VR) devices on the market, and a few more are coming soon: Oppo’s MR glasses, a mixed reality headset, use cameras to have video passthrough on their display, just like the Quest Pro and the expected headset from Apple. Qualcomm is also working with Google and Samsung on a future mixed reality platform and device that are expected to be further detailed over the next year.

Both Apple’s headset, and Google’s Samsung-Qualcomm partnership, should and likely will imply that apps on devices we already use phones, tablets, and perhaps laptops work with future headsets. Microsoft’s XR partnership with Qualcomm on chips could also shape similar plans for Windows.

Snapdragon Spaces is by no means the ideal way to make all these apps work with AR glasses, but it’s a start. And it’s also a hint, again, that hardware plans are already leaning into the idea that these earphones exist more as interconnected peripherals than standalone devices. That’s fine by me: while the Quest 2 was impressive, the only way to make these goggles and goggles more useful is to work seamlessly with the stuff already in our pockets.

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