Qualcomm says Samsung, Google plan to use its new headset chip

By Stephen Nellis

(Reuters) – Qualcomm on Thursday said Samsung Electronics and Alphabet’s Google plan to use a new computing chip it designed to power mixed and virtual reality headsets.

The Qualcomm chip, called the Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2, will be able to handle data feeds from a dozen cameras inside the headset.

It comes as competition to sell what are known as mixed-reality headsets – where a view of the outside world is passed through to the user via cameras – is expected to heat up this year with Apple’s release of its Vision Pro headset.

TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said the iPhone maker could start selling the $3,500 Vision Pro headset, which uses the same custom-designed chip as some of Apple’s laptops, later this month or in early February.

Google and Samsung did not specify the products in which they plan to use the new Qualcomm chip.

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Jamie Freed)