Snapdragon XR announcement could spell trouble for Apple Vision Pro

Qualcomm may be planning to reveal a next-generation XR chipset, which could allow companies like LG and Samsung to go head-to-head with the Apple Vision Pro.

When it comes to high-end XR headsets, Apple has neatly captured the market with its Apple Vision Pro, but news out of the Snapdragon Summit 2023 suggests that this may soon change as Qualcomm seems to have a next-generation XR chipset in the works that will allow competitors like Meta, Samsung, and LG to close the technology gap.

As reported by UploadVR, the news was originally broken by South Korean news outlet Electronic Times, which interviewed Qualcomm’s GM and VP of XR Hugo Swart, who stated that Qualcomm was planning to officially unveil the new chipset in the first quarter of 2024.

Qualcomm’s next-gen chip might worry Apple

Qualcomm’s most recent XR chip was the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2, which is used to power the Meta Quest 3, which was launched earlier this month. The XR2 is based on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, which sees use in top-end Android devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S23.

More recently, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which has led to speculation that the upcoming XR chip referred to by Hugo Swart would be based on this chip. This would see a potential 25% improvement in GPU and up to 30% improvement in CPU performance over the XR2 Gen 2. However, this rumored release schedule does not match Qualcomm’s established timing for product lines such as the XR series.

Analysts have speculated that the new XR chip could be a new product line entirely, pointing to the announcement of the Snapdragon X, whose use of the fully-custom ‘Oryon’ CPU cores is designed to close the gap between Qualcomm-powered laptops and those manufactured by Apple.

Qualcomm could be betting that the Oryon is the technology solution that lets its CPUs match up to Apple.

Samsung and LG are already said to be working on new XR headsets, with Samsung partnering with Google while LG works with Meta to build a Quest Pro 2. If these devices are using Qualcomm’s latest technology, this could see substantially more competition for Apple in the high-end XR space.