Qualcomm : A Q&A with Qualcomm Technologies’ Hugo Swart on Snapdragon Spaces and the future of AR

In this new era of connectivity, interactivity, and immersion, our relationship with digital technologies is rapidly evolving. AR glasses, VR headsets, and other devices are offering new, exciting ways to access the metaverse and blend our physical and digital worlds for work, education, entertainment, creativity, and communication. In the same way the internet fostered a new paradigm in imagination and creativity, XR is furthering that evolution by creating spaces that blend our physical and digital worlds.

Over the last decade, Qualcomm Technologies has invested heavily in developing industry leading technology and platforms like the Snapdragon XR2 and XR1 Platforms, which enable millions of XR devices for companies like Meta, Microsoft, Snap, ByteDance and Lenovo. Optimizing our chips for performance and efficiency, building device reference designs, and investing in new spatial computing technologies have become the core pillars of our leadership in this industry for a diverse range of customers.

And now, we're strengthening our commitment to XR with the Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform, designed to support developers and companies on their journey to trailblaze the next generation of spatial computing. Powerful, open platform tools combined with a robust ecosystem of partners make it easy for developers to create innovative AR applications and build immersive digital experiences.

Leading the way for innovative, groundbreaking XR technologies at Qualcomm Technologies is Hugo Swart, VP, Product Management and GM of XR. We recently sat down with Hugo to talk about Snapdragon Spaces and his vision for XR, as well as some of the amazing companies and partners helping make it all possible.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Tell us about Snapdragon Spaces. How does the platform help developers create AR experiences in new ways?

Beyond enabling hardware devices through our Snapdragon platforms, we realized we needed to do more to support the growth of the AR ecosystem. That's where Snapdragon Spaces comes in, as a platform that exposes our technology - like perception algorithms and spatial computing features - to developers. That's a big shift from our previous mode of only exposing this technology to our hardware OEM customers. Snapdragon Spaces has a developer-first mentality, providing APIs, dev kits, sample code, documentation, and the support developers need to create immersive experiences.

With that vision in mind, we set out to give developers access to the latest and greatest in XR technology and put it directly in their hands. It's a positive cycle of us giving technology to developers who in turn give us feedback leading to improvements in our technology. This is good for both the developer and Qualcomm Technologies, but also to our OEM hardware customers, because there is already an ecosystem with applications ready to be distributed through their hardware. At Qualcomm Technologies, we've long had software and hardware platforms delivered to OEMs. Now, we're bringing these platforms together to grow a larger ecosystem that benefits everyone.

What's the importance of future XR applications created within open platforms like Khronos OpenXR?

We don't want to reinvent the wheel. We want to avoid fragmentation so that the spatial compute XR ecosystem can flourish - where it's easier for the industry to make content through APIs and tools that developers are accustomed to, and that they use every day. That's the crucial goal with Snapdragon Spaces: to create an open platform and harmonize the ecosystem among known standards that multiple companies and industries already follow. OpenXR has the entire industry backing it, so we felt it perfectly aligns with our goals - and we're going to keep working closely with Khronos to continue supporting that for our ecosystem.

Tell us about Qualcomm's recent acquisition of Wikitude. What does the company do in the mobile AR space, and how does it fill that role better than others?

A big question we were looking to answer when searching for companies like Wikitude was how to jumpstart our expertise to go beyond OEMs, to add developers to type of company we engage with. We wanted a company with AR expertise and with developer expertise, and Wikitude was at the top of the chart. Not only does it have over 150,000 developers and the pedigree of multiple years of experience with AR SDKs - it has key technologies like image and object recognition and tracking. So, we saw the company as a very good fit for what we wanted.

Wikitude was focused on smartphone AR, where people see augmented content through their smartphones. We're now targeting glasses and headworn AR, and that's where our collaboration shines. We're encapsulating our technology with the framework that Wikitude has built with its developers. Our acquisition allowed us to quickly provide quality technologies for developers to hit the ground running with Snapdragon Spaces.

How will Wikitude help drive growth in headworn AR devices, and why is headworn the future of AR?

We finalized the acquisition of Wikitude at the end of the third quarter in 2021, and we're making Snapdragon Spaces available by spring of 2022. You see a very quick launch because it's a very good match, and it's easy to see how our strengths work together, creating a solution that will move the industry forward. Wikitude's expertise in smartphone AR transitions nicely to headworn AR because the technologies and development are very similar, which allows for a rapid integration and shift to headworn AR development.

One of the primary reasons headworn AR is the future is convenience. Holding up a phone with your arms extended gets tiring. If you have a display in front of your eyes, if information can be overlayed on top of the real world - well, what's more convenient than that? Then it becomes a question of field of view; the display of a phone is fairly small compared to a human's natural field of view. That's why headworn AR offers a level of immersion you can't achieve with smartphones - the digital layer can be seamlessly integrated with the physical layer, and with a much wider perspective in front of your eyes. When you have a device directly in front of your face, it offers the same effortless perspective as what your eyes are seeing.

That's why glasses are perfectly suited for the next generation of AR. Of course, we understand that this is a journey, and that we're not close to our end goal. We're at a very good point today with applications for enterprise and new viewers that are already transforming how people work. But it will be a few years until we get glasses that can fully substitute for the other computing devices we carry with us all the time. Ultimately, what we're seeing is a transition from computing on 2D rectangular screens to a world where computing is 3D, spatial, and anchored in the real world. The name Snapdragon Spaces comes from this evolution in physical and digital spaces.

What is the Snapdragon Spaces Pathfinder program, and how does it fit in with Qualcomm Technologies' vision for the Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform?

We started working with early access developers who we handpicked to be the first to use the technology, give us feedback, and start creating flagship experiences. Now, we're getting ready to expand and support this first wave of developers, and that's the Snapdragon Spaces Pathfinder program. We're already accepting applications and received many within the first month. We'll select applicants that best suit the features and device capabilities for a launch in the near future. It's a great way to help talented developers with robust direct support, dev kits, and funding for projects, prioritizing relationships to quickly use our platforms to build a community dedicated to creating amazing immersive experiences. This is a developer-first platform, and we want to make every effort to ensure this new ecosystem is as seamless as possible.

Discover everything the Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform has to offer.

Apply to the Snapdragon Spaces Pathfinder Program.

Snapdragon and Snapdragon Spaces are products of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. Snapdragon Spaces Pathfinder is a program of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.