Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On April 17, Qualcomm Technology announced a cooperation with Beijing Shenmu Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shenmu Technology"). The latter will provide localized services and technical support for the Snapdragon Spaces XR developer platform, a cross-terminal platform and an open partner ecosystem in the Chinese market.

This cooperation reflects Qualcomm's determination to promote the further development of China's XR market, and hopes to work with industry partners and developers to accelerate the innovation of XR applications using Snapdragon Spaces, so as to support the expansion of Snapdragon Spaces developer ecology in China and contribute to the ecological prosperity and development of XR content in China.

Snapdragon Spaces, the XR developer platform launched by Qualcomm in 2021, will help create an immersive experience that seamlessly blurs the boundaries between the real world and the digital world. In June 2022, Snapdragon Spaces was officially available for download to developers around the world. The cooperation between Qualcomm and Shenmu Technology can be seen as a sign that Snapdragon Spaces has begun to expand China's XR content ecology in an all-round way.

So, what changes will Snapdragon Spaces, and this cooperation, bring to our XR market and industry? As consumers, what kind of integrated reality experience can we get in the future?

XR market rises abruptly based on accumulated strength, but these problems still need to be solved before qualitative change. Before concrete analysis, it is necessary to take a look at the current development stage of our XR industry and market.

According to data released by market research firm IDC, the Chinese XR market shipped more than 1.2 million units of hardware in 2022, of which the proportion of consumer-grade devices rose to 83% in the fourth quarter. At the same time, the shipments of VR equipment in the Chinese market exceeded 1 million units for the first time, and the shipments of AR equipment exceeded 100000 units for the first time.

As for this year, IDC said that China's XR hardware market shipments are expected to exceed 2 million units. In addition to IDC, another market research institution Deloitte is also optimistic about XR market shipments this year, they believe that China's VR equipment shipments alone will exceed 2 million units in 2023.

This is a bright side, at the same time, we can not ignore the current XR products and market development problems. According to the 2022 XR Industry Investment report issued by Entrepreneurship State not long ago, the overall scale of China's XR market is still relatively small, and it is faced with many problems, such as imperfect content ecology, high price of basic hardware, user habits and so on.

Especially in the key consumer market, I believe we all have feelings. For example, the prices of generally good all-in-one VR phones are all above 2000 yuan, exceeding the consumption expectations of most consumers on VR products, while in content, until now, there is no really killer VR content, and the main thing to buy back is to watch videos and play some Mini Game.

And until now, the problem of bulky and uncomfortable VR equipment has not been fundamentally solved. Although there are some lightweight VR devices on the market, they often have limited functions or need to be connected to terminals such as mobile phones, which are not independent enough.

As for AR, at present, most consumer devices only play the role of extended display of terminals such as mobile phones, and the scenes that are really easy to use are also relatively limited.

This series of problems need to further strengthen cooperation between the upper and lower reaches of the industrial chain in the future, work together to optimize technology and products, and create content ecology, in order to really expand the cake of the industry and promote the development and progress of the industry as a whole.

It can be said that at present, China's XR industry as a whole is still in the early stage of development, but after years of energy storage, the industry has reached the time of "thin hair", and it is also a critical period to move towards a higher stage, among which the development of consumer products has become the top priority.

But at the same time, the problems existing in the product hardware and content ecology of the market also need to be solved urgently, which puts forward higher requirements for the deep cooperation at the level of the industrial chain.

To sum up, CTOnews.com abstracts the two most important points for the consumer market:

First, we need high-performance, low-power computing power to promote better product terminals.

Second, we need richer and more meta-content ecology to stimulate the attractiveness of XR to consumers.

These two points cooperate with each other, promote each other, and the software and hardware go hand in hand, which can really help the XR industry to enter a new stage of development.

Four strategic blessings, hardware and software co-development is the correct solution, of course, the above is only a macro analysis, specific how to do, and how to promote XR software and hardware industry level of in-depth cooperation? It is not easy, and it needs to be promoted by roles that have enough appeal in the underlying software and hardware ecological construction. And Qualcomm is undoubtedly one of the most suitable roles.

From a technological point of view, Qualcomm has been engaged in the research and development of XR cutting-edge technology for more than a decade.

They started the first AR research project in 2007, launched the first-generation Snapdragon XR1 and the first-generation Snapdragon XR2 platform in 2018 and 2019 respectively, and last year released the first-generation Snapdragon XR2 + platform and the first-generation Snapdragon AR2 platform to create smart glasses terminals with small appearance, lightweight and low power consumption. At the same time, in February this year, Qualcomm announced a new generation of lightweight AR smart glasses reference design based on the first-generation Snapdragon AR2 platform.

So far, more than 65 terminal devices equipped with Snapdragon XR platform have been released, including VR and AR devices, covering the consumer and enterprise markets.

In the long-term process of ploughing the XR industry, Qualcomm has gradually formed four pillars for the development of the empowered XR industry, which are:

Processing platform, that is, the special platform for Snapdragon XR

Software and algorithms, including specific technologies such as location tracking, image recognition and tracking

Reference design

XR ecosystem.

The essence of these four strategic pillars is to solve the problems of products and content in the current XR market through deep cooperation between hardware and software, so as to promote the all-round development of China's XR industry as a whole.

For example, in terms of hardware, we need high-performance and low-power computing. For Qualcomm's latest first-generation Snapdragon AR2 platform, it can reduce the main processor footprint by 40%, increase AI performance by 2.5 times, and reduce power consumption by 50%, thus solving the challenge of implementing low-power and high-performance computing on compact devices.

At the same time, Qualcomm also has a powerful connection technology to solve the problem of high-performance and low-power computing. Or take the first-generation Snapdragon AR2 platform, which is equipped with FastConnect 7800 connection system and supports Wi-Fi 7, allowing the latency between AR glasses and cloud and host devices (including smartphones) to be less than 2 milliseconds, which can also solve the problems of computing and power consumption.

With the support of such a computing platform, the future XR terminal manufacturers can gradually launch high-performance, lightweight, comfortable XR devices, so as to solve the pain points faced by consumers. In fact, Qualcomm has been working with Xiaomi, OPPO, Yijia, PICO and other manufacturers to create such devices.

In terms of software and content ecology, we have to talk about Qualcomm's Snapdragon Spaces XR developer platform.

Snapdragon Spaces: if you want the industry to prosper, you must have good content. If Qualcomm's previous efforts are mainly at the hardware level to pave the way for XR terminal manufacturers to launch high-performance, low-power, lightweight products, then with the cooperation between Qualcomm and Shenmu Technology, Qualcomm's deep ploughing in China's localized XR market will really go deep into the field of software ecology. The key to this is the Snapdragon Spaces XR developer platform.

Instead of providing technology and software to hardware OEM vendors in the past, through the Snapdragon Spaces XR developer platform, Qualcomm can directly target developers, provide them with core aware algorithms and software, and open API to them. These core algorithms and technologies include location tracking, local anchor points and their persistence, plane detection, gesture tracking, etc., and this platform also supports OpenXR standards and is compatible with unreal engines, Unity and other core 3D engines.

At the same time, Snapdragon Spaces is an open cross-terminal XR ecosystem, developers only need to do a development, they can provide to many different terminal equipment manufacturers to use. This greatly improves their convenience and efficiency in creating high-quality XR content.

As one of the few media invited to participate in this cooperation and communication event between Qualcomm and Shenmu, CTOnews.com asked Hugo Swart, vice president and general manager of XR, Qualcomm at the scene, that is, why did Qualcomm choose Shenmu as a partner for Snapdragon Spaces to expand the ecological localization of Chinese developers? what does Qualcomm value?

To this, Si Hongguo's answer is:

We need a partner with strong advantages in 3D content creation, developer network, and developer community service management. Shenmu Technology has excellent capabilities and can complement Qualcomm's solutions.

Therefore, through Shenmu Technology, we can also see some detailed methods of Qualcomm in promoting the ecological prosperity and development of China's XR content. For example, what technology can provide developers with a variety of knowledge and technical support, including video, documentation and online and offline training.

At the same time, Shenmu Technology can also be responsible for the application and delivery of developers' hardware, because their creativity and content presentation ultimately need hardware as a medium.

More crucially, Shenmu Technology will also be responsible for operating and managing the XR content distribution platform, such as helping to commercialize developers' works in the development process, which is a very important part.

For example, Shenmu Technology will also work with upstream and downstream partners to promote the development of standards in the relevant XR industry. As an emerging technology field, XR still has many standards that have not been fully determined, which need to be explored by the participants in the XR industry chain within the United Nations.

From this series of detailed business, we can see that Qualcomm not only stays at the strategic level to promote the development of China's XR content ecology, but also has a specific and comprehensive promotion plan, and Shenmu Technology, as Si Hongguo said, is a partner choice that can really help Qualcomm and Snapdragon Spaces integrate into the ecology of local XR developers in China.

It is believed that with the promotion of this series of solutions, Snapdragon Spaces will not only be a trusted tool for domestic XR developers, but also a soil and platform for developers to communicate freely, cooperate with each other, and rely on for survival, and developers can also use Snapdragon Spaces to create high-quality XR applications and content that meet the preferences and habits of domestic consumers.

Maybe before, people will think that XR doesn't have any killer apps that are really attractive and popular, but one of the big reasons is that the technology is not in place and the development tools are not rich and easy to use. Just like in the smartphone era, the emergence of location-based service (LBS) technology has given birth to influential applications with a large number of users, such as "Didi", "Meituan" and so on.

In fact, the same is true of XR. Now Qualcomm and Shenmu Technology are working together to pave the way for developers in technology through Snapdragon Spaces, while striving to create a high-quality communication and collaborative atmosphere for developers, and strive to open up commercial closed loops. next, let's see how developers can exert their creativity and bring more content and applications that can really attract consumers to use. So that XR can really integrate into the work, study and life of the general public. I believe that at that time, the development of the XR industry will really step into a new stage.

Of course, as mentioned earlier, software and hardware promote each other, and when the content ecology of XR flourishes and users are willing to consume, it will also promote the continuous evolution of the end product form. And this premise is that terminal manufacturers can also integrate into the ecology of Snapdragon Spaces. In fact, Qualcomm is already actively working with OEM terminal manufacturers to launch devices that meet Snapdragon Spaces requirements.

For example, Qualcomm first launched Snapdragon Spaces; for AR through Lenovo ThinkReality A3 smart glasses, and then used Lenovo ThinkReality VRX to expand Snapdragon Spaces to VR and MR.

At this year's World Mobile Congress (MWCB), Qualcomm and Xiaomi jointly announced that Xiaomi's wireless AR glasses exploration version has also been certified by Snapdragon Spaces Ready. At the same time, OPPO also confirmed that it will launch a new Snapdragon Spaces Ready-certified MR terminal.

AR glasses usually need to be used with smartphones, and Qualcomm is also enabling smartphones to support Snapdragon Spaces Ready certification. During this year's MWCB, one plus 11 5G became the first second-generation Snapdragon 8 smartphone to be certified by Snapdragon Spaces Ready.

In addition to terminal manufacturers, mobile operators who want to enter the XR market are also working with Qualcomm Technologies on the Snapdragon Spaces XR developer platform. Also during the MWCB period, Qualcomm announced a partnership with seven leading global operators to promote Snapdragon Spaces in their respective markets, including domestic Qualcomm and China Mobile.

It can be seen that not only OPPO, Xiaomi and other terminal manufacturers, including operators, including the XR industry chain, are looking forward to the expansion of Snapdragon Spaces in the domestic ecology. This is what we say, the current XR industry is precisely the moment when all aspects of the industrial chain need to cooperate with each other, open and coordinated. I believe Qualcomm can also bring the leadership and partnership in the mobile phone market to the field of XR, and jointly promote the prosperity and development of the domestic XR industry.

Conclusion after the smartphone industry has entered saturation and the dividend has faded, everyone is looking for the next generation of computing devices after mobile phones, and XR is undoubtedly the most promising choice. Because from the whole development trend of computing, it is inevitable to evolve from 2D computing on mobile phones, laptops and televisions to 3D spatial computing.

Such spatial calculation requires a close combination of 5G, AI and XR, in which XR is undoubtedly the top layer and can be presented in the form of products.

As Si Hongguo said:

We invest in XR not because of its popularity, but because we always believe in the future of XR.

I believe that with the cooperation of the whole XR industry, we will go towards such a future step by step.

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