Qualcomm Sees a Future Beyond Smartphones

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon revealed Tuesday that the company is working on over 40 different AI wearable devices, including jewelry, earbuds with cameras, pins, and watches. This indicates a significant shift in strategy, as Qualcomm aims to be the chip inside whatever replaces the traditional smartphone.

Snapdragon Reality Elite: A Leap in Mixed Reality Performance

Qualcomm is announcing two new offerings: a platform called Snapdragon Reality Elite for mixed reality glasses and the Scalable Turnkey AI-Ready Toolkit (START), a combination of hardware modules and a software stack for AI devices. The Snapdragon Reality Elite delivers improvements of up to 60% in GPU performance, up to 30% in CPU performance, and up to 160% in NPU performance compared to its previous XR platform.

This enhanced performance enables the chip to run a 3-billion-parameter language model at 45 tokens per second, facilitating quick and responsive AI interactions. Qualcomm also claims the chip will enable better head and hand tracking, along with improved see-through capabilities. The platform supports 4.4K per-eye resolution at 90 fps, a modest bump from the XR2+ Gen 2's 4.3K per-eye resolution.

START: A Toolkit for AI Devices

The Snapdragon Reality Elite is designed to power two types of devices: standalone video-see-through (VST) headsets and lightweight, tethered optical-see-through (OST) glasses. Among the first devices to use it are the XREAL Project Aura and an upcoming device from Play for Dream. START consists of an AR chip, a software platform, companion apps, and a white-label program aimed at helping hardware makers get to market faster.

Through the white label program, Qualcomm is offering three reference designs: an audio + camera setup similar to Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses, a monocular display, and a binocular display. Eyewear manufacturers Inspecs and O'Neill — owned by TitanFlex — will be among the first partners in the white label program. Qualcomm said START will expand beyond smart glasses to support other form factors in the future.

Amon's Vision for the Future

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon argued that a new wave of hardware startups building novel form factors will emerge, with major implications for established smartphone players like Apple and Samsung. He believes that companies will seek to gather more real-world data from users to power their AI agents, leading to a surge in experimentation with different form factors.

Amon stated, "The principle is something that you wear, something [that] is with you all the time, something that can see the world around you, so you have context and have the ability for you to access an agent and talk to the agent." Qualcomm is positioning itself as the foundational silicon layer for whatever comes after the smartphone, with START's white-label program designed to lower the barrier for new entrants.