Qualcomm President Cristiano Amon said that his company’s Snapdragon chips are already in 20 mixed reality or virtual reality headsets, and 20 more are in development based on Snapdragon. That includes the upcoming Oculus Go standalone VR headset coming from Facebook’s Oculus division in 2018.
Hugo Barra, vice president at Oculus, joined Qualcomm’s press event at CES 2018, the big tech trade show in Las Vegas this week. He said the company’s Oculus Go headset, targeted at $200, will use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 chip set. The Oculus Go is a low-cost, standalone version that has a subset of the capability of the PC-connected Oculus Rift VR headset, and it represents Facebook’s effort to reach a broader audience for VR technology.
Above: Thomas Tang of Xiaomi and the Mi Ecosystem announces a new VR device.
Xiaomi is launching Oculus Go globally with Facebook/Oculus, and Xiaomi is designing a headset that is specifically tailored for the Chinese market.
Thomas Tang, vice president of the Mi Ecosystem at Xiaomi, said his company will develop the Mi VR standalone headset, based on the same hardware as Oculus Go. While VR is taking off slow, Amon said that cell phones took off slow in their early days as well. Qualcomm became a multibillion-dollar company on the success of cellphones and the chips used in them.
Source: Qualcomm’s chips will power 20 more VR headsets this year, including Facebook’s Oculus Go
