Samsung wants to enter the AR/VR field again, but it will start with chips first

According to recent news, Samsung may re-enter the field of virtual reality technology in the second half of this year or the first half of next year, and plans to start with chips and launch an XR (extended reality) head-mounted display device in the future to cope with Apple’s upcoming launch of the same technology. type product.

(Samsung’s VR head-mounted display device Gear VR launched in 2015)

XR is the collective name for AR/VR/MR technology. In 2015, Samsung entered the XR market and launched a product called Samsung Gear VR. This product requires a smartphone to have a VR experience. Due to poor experience, sales reasons, and the subsequent fading of the VR concept, Samsung subsequently gave up updating Gear VR.

(Speculation rendering of Reality Pro, Apple’s upcoming MR head-mounted display device)

But from a longer time period, the XR market has actually always had full potential. At present, the growth of the smartphone market is facing a bottleneck. This terminal form seems to be coming to an end, and XR devices have become one of the rare solutions.

Moreover, according to a report by the research organization Counterpoint Research, by 2025, the annual sales of XR equipment will exceed 110 million units, a significant increase from the current annual sales of 18 million units; by 2025, the sales of the entire XR equipment market are expected to be reaching US$50.9 billion. It can be said that this is a vast blue ocean.

Although the XR concept has temporarily faded out, in the second half of the year, Apple’s upcoming head-mounted display device may revive the craze of this concept. After Apple enters the game, Android camp manufacturers are bound to enter this track one after another.

Samsung has adopted a strategy of starting from the chip field, which means that they have learned lessons from the failures of previous VR equipment products and existing market conditions. Although Gear VR became the leader in the VR hardware market at the time of its release and successfully sold 4.5 million units in 2016, a large part of this number came from Samsung’s “half sale, half free” promotion, and its cost was not high. Low. According to analysis by industry insiders, Samsung’s move to target the chip market may be the result of learning from previous lessons and careful consideration of the current market.

At present, the field of XR chips is led by Qualcomm. MediaTek also successfully entered the market this year. Sony’s latest PS VR2 is equipped with MediaTek’s first VR chip.

However, Qualcomm successfully captured most of the market share with only an older Snapdragon XR2 chip (same period as the Snapdragon 865 chip). As a major R&D manufacturer, Samsung has been overturning on the mobile SoC side one after another, but it can be seen from the fact that Qualcomm can easily win the share that it is not too late to enter the XR chip market, and Samsung can also use this to establish Create a new ecosystem and gradually expand product lines.

Editor’s comment: Samsung has obviously learned a lesson. When the VR concept was in full swing, the editor used the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge mobile phone that had a Gear VR giveaway, so of course I also used this device. I only used Gear VR two or three times and then never touched it again because I found it boring. Now the VR/AR concept is about to make a comeback with Apple's new devices. As an old rival, Samsung will not miss this opportunity. The editor also hopes to see some manufacturers launch new personal terminal products that truly change the world.

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