Meta’s Dragging Qualcomm Into Its Metaverse Hell for the Foreseeable Future

Mark Zuckerberg’s recruiting some assist to inch his metaverse imaginative and prescient nearer to actuality.

On Friday, Meta and Qualcomm announced they’re partnering as much as design {custom} chipsets for Meta’s digital actuality headsets which they imagine might energy, “a new era of spatial computing.” The multi-year settlement between the 2 corporations will see Meta’s Quest headsets powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon tech. The settlement means Meta, not like different opponents like Google and Apple, received’t ship {hardware} with its personal processor for the foreseeable future.

“As we continue to build more advanced capabilities and experiences for virtual and augmented reality, it has become more important to build specialized technologies to power our future VR headsets and other devices,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg mentioned in an announcement. “Unlike mobile phones, building virtual reality brings novel, multi-dimensional challenges in spatial computing, cost, and form factor. These chipsets will help us keep pushing virtual reality to its limits and deliver awesome experiences.”

Meta and Qualcomm aren’t precisely strangers. The Quest 2 headset presently makes use of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR2 chipset, and the 2 have labored collectively for the higher a part of seven years. Friday’s deal, based on Qualcomm, “solidifies the mutual commitment to deliver multiple generations of premium devices and experiences powered by custom VR platforms in the years to come.”

Regardless of what it’s possible you’ll take into consideration Zuckerberg’s imaginative and prescient for a legless cartoon workforce, shopper curiosity in headsets are clearly on the rise. Global shipments for VR headsets shot up 241.6% within the first quarter in comparison with the identical time final yr according to IDC knowledge. On the patron entrance, Meta’s Quest merchandise are the undisputed kings. Meta’s headsets accounted for a staggering 90% of the general market, thanks partially to its alleged strategy of leaning on extra worthwhile sectors of its enterprise to artificially scale back headset costs…and steer away competitors within the course of. All that funding’s beginning to add up although. The firm reportedly misplaced $2.81 billion from simply $452 million in income from its Reality Labs VR division in the course of the second quarter.

“Meta continues to pour dollars into developing the metaverse but the strategy of promoting low-cost hardware at the expense of profitability isn’t sustainable in the long run,” IDC analysis supervisor Jitesh Ubrani mentioned in an announcement.

Meta resists in-house chip pattern

Meta’s choice to proceed partnering with Qualcomm barely diverges from different Big Tech opponents like Apple and Google, who’re more and more opting to create their very own chipsets for a wide range of merchandise. Google’s already shipped telephones with its in-house Tensor chips and reportedly plans to launch a line of Chromebooks with a custom-made processor as early as subsequent yr. Apple in the meantime continues to evolve and increase its M1 and M2 {custom} chips in its laptops and iPads.

On the VR aspect, Apple’s reportedly opting to go it alone as effectively. According to a June Bloomberg report, Apple’s first combined actuality headset, which might price as a lot as $3,000, might come outfitted with Apple’s M2 processor and 16 gigabytes of RAM. Then once more, Bloomberg additionally found a patent submitting this week for a “Reality Processor” which suggests Apple may very well be working by itself custom-made chipsets for its eventual headset. Those are a whole lot of what ifs and maybes, however given Apple’s trajectory it looks as if their headset, which will be the solely headset capable of really rival Meta’s within the shopper market, will probably ship with an in-house chip of some sort.