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| Samsung Electronics Mobile eXperience Business President Roh Tae-moon, center, Qualcomm President and CEO Cristiano Amon, left, and Hiroshi Lockheimer, senior vice president of Platforms & Ecosystems at Google, stand on stage as Samsung Electronics unveils its latest flagship smartphones in San Francisco, California, Feb. 1. Reuters-Yonhap |
Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics said Thursday it will collaborate with Qualcomm and Google to build an ecosystem for extended reality (XR).
Samsung announced the partnership at the Galaxy Unpacked event in San Francisco, Feb. 1 (local time), where the company unveiled its new Galaxy S flagship smartphones ― the Galaxy S23 series.
"We will transform the future of the mobile industry by building the XR ecosystem together with Qualcomm and Google," said Roh Tae-moon, president of Samsung Electronics' Mobile eXperience Business, at the event. XR is an umbrella term covering virtual (VR) and augmented reality (AR).
"It will take time to introduce new products, but we will make progress and provide you with new updates," he said, adding creating a new ecosystem could not be done by Samsung alone as it required collaboration with strong partners.
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon and Google Android Senior Vice President Hiroshi Lockheimer appeared on stage alongside Roh to announce the news.
Amon said Samsung and Qualcomm have been working together to open a new world for XR experiences based on a more than 25-year partnership.
Lockheimer emphasized the importance of collaboration with the two tech firms with state-of-the-art hardware and software technologies to bring next-generation digital experiences to the world.
The announcement did not include any specific products under development or a timeline for them, but industry experts speculate Samsung might develop XR headsets built on Qualcomm's chipset and Google's operating system.
It also came amid speculation that Samsung's rival Apple could launch its first virtual reality headset as early as this spring.
Samsung is no stranger to the wearables market. It released the virtual reality headset Gear VR in collaboration with Oculus VR in 2015. In October 2020, however, Samsung ended services for its XR applications. (Yonhap)
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