Broad vision
To us, this technology is pretty much justified merely by being cool. With smartphones already able to do so much these days it takes something pretty special to make one stand out. AR done well would count as pretty special.
But there are some practical uses for vision-based augmented reality other than just showing off to your mates. These include interactive media, where content or an ad can be superimposed on an object, and how-to apps that can make instructions appear on top of the item in question.
Qualcomm announced a few AR initiatives at Uplinq - including a $200,000 AR developer challenge - but it does expect some ROI from all this investment. Vision-based AR apps developed on this platform will be optimised for Snapdragon and will be developed solely for Android initially.
"We view AR as a strategic future area for the company," said Wright. "We'd like to see it on all operating systems, but Android is a great place to start because there's a lot of mindshare with Snapdragon. We're excited about vision-based AR driving a new generation of app, and there has been tremendous developer response since Uplinq."
Qualcomm gets involved in a surprising amount of stuff outside of its core chip business, such as mobile discovery and displays. The rationale is simple: on one hand, anything that increases demand for mobile phones is good for Qualcomm, and at the same time the company diversifies its offering. If this initiative results in cool AR apps for everyone, soon, then we'll all benefit from it.
