Qualcomm, Samsung and Google announced their partnership to build an XR headset at the Unpacked event in February 2023. ZDNET/Samsung Screenshot
According to new reports from Upload VR and Korean newspaper The JoonAng, the XR alliance formed by Samsung, Google and Qualcomm to build a mixed reality headset has hit the reset button on its project and delayed the launch.
JoonAng reports that Samsung has ordered higher-resolution displays from Samsung Display for its Samsung headphones from early 2024 to mid-2024 and delayed the launch of the headphones until the end of the year.
JoonAng’s sources also claim that Samsung’s headphone production target will be a modest 30,000 units by 2024. In comparison, Apple’s production targets have also been reduced from 1 million to 400,000 units of the Vision Pro by 2024.
Also: I tested the Apple Vision Pro and it’s miles ahead of what I expected
On the other hand, Upload VR reported that Samsung also informed developers that its new headsets will be launched in late 2024.
This information joins multiple reports that have emerged since this summer that Samsung, Google and Qualcomm decided to go back to the drawing board after Apple announced the Visio Pro at WWDC in June with high-end specs that surprised the industry. . However, at the Unpacked event in July, Samsung talked about the announcement of its headphones “not too far away.”
Samsing is designing the hardware for the joint venture’s XR headset, while Google is developing a mixed reality version of Android and Qualcomm is supplying the underlying chip technology, most likely the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 platform, which powers the Meta Quest headset. 3 which just launched in October.
Also: I tried Meta’s Quest 3 VR headset and the mixed reality experience was next level
This kind of reboot is reminiscent of the birth of Android, when Google was designing its smartphone platform to be a BlackBerry-like system until it saw Apple’s iPhone announcement and then started again. Instead, it turned Android into a multi-touch interface much more like that of the iPhone, and Samsung quickly became Android’s biggest proponent and best-selling hardware maker.
If this supposedly leaked headset prototype, clearly designed in the mold of the first Oculus Quest and HTC Vive headsets, was real, then it’s a positive move that the trio is rebooting their plans. I expect Samsung to design a much more attractive hardware product by the time we finally get to see its next-generation headphones in mid-2024, possibly at the summer Unpacked event where it typically unveils its latest foldable phones.
