electronics
Meta and Qualcomm cooperate on VR glasses
For its future computer glasses, Meta relies on a cooperation with the chip company Qualcomm. photo
© Tony Avelar/AP/dpa
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg dreams of a virtual “Metaverse”. The VR glasses are to be equipped with Qualcomm technology for this purpose.
For its future computer glasses for displaying virtual reality, the Facebook group Meta is working more closely with the chip group Qualcomm.
The companies agreed on a multi-year strategic cooperation, as Qualcomm boss Cristiano Amon announced on Friday at the IFA technology fair in Berlin. This includes closer technical cooperation between the development and product teams. Qualcomm’s technology is already in Meta’s current Quest 2 VR glasses, among other things.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the ambitious goal of aligning his company with virtual worlds – the “Metaverse” – and thus establishing the next major computer platform. To cement the change, he had the company name changed from Facebook to Meta.
The plan is an expensive undertaking: The responsible unit Reality Labs wrote an operating loss of 5.77 billion dollars in the first half of this year alone. Meanwhile, Meta has less room to spend than it used to. Because the group’s advertising business came under pressure in the face of economic concerns, competition from the video app Tiktok and Apple’s measures to protect privacy on the iPhone.
Qualcomm is particularly strong in modem chips that connect smartphones to the mobile network – and also supplies the main processors for a large number of phones with the Google Android operating system. Company boss Amon also wants to do more business with the automotive industry. In addition to VR glasses, Qualcomm also wants to supply chips for future glasses with so-called augmented reality (AR), in which digital content is displayed directly in the real environment for the user. Apple, Google and Meta, among others, are working on such devices.