According to South China Morning Postthe American Qualcomm has decided to join forces with ByteDance, the Chinese giant that owns TikTok, in order to advancing immersive technologies which will be used for the development of the metaverse.
They want to advance immersive technologies
Alongside Pico Interactive, a company specializing in the manufacture of virtual reality headsets, Qualcomm and ByteDance decide to collaborate in hardware and software in order to prepare for the arrival of the metaverse. Together, they want to advance immersive technologies like virtual reality and extended reality (a term referring to all combined real and virtual environments and human-computer interactions generated by computer technology).
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Cristiano Amon, President and CEO of Qualcomm, said on February 28, 2022, during a press conference organized on the sidelines of the MWC show in Barcelona, that “Qualcomm to Collaborate with ByteDance in Hardware and Software to Enable Global XR Ecosystem”. ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo appeared in a video during Qualcomm’s announcement to express “the commitment of the Chinese company in this project alongside a recognized company in terms of extended reality”.
ByteDance is increasingly interested in the metaverse
Pico’s latest virtual reality headset, the Neo 3 Pro, already comes with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR2 chip. This partnership should allow ByteDance to catch up in the metaverse field against Tencent and Baidu. The two Chinese companies alone represent more than half of the world’s top ten patent applicants for virtual reality and augmented reality technologies over the past two years.
Other Chinese tech companies that made it into the top 10 include smartphone maker Oppo, Ping An Insurance Co, SenseTime and Huawei Technologies Co, formerly China’s biggest smartphone seller. With the recent acquisition of Pico Interactive and this partnership with Qualcomm, ByteDance officially sets foot in the metaverse.
A few weeks ago, the group had already launched Paiduidao on Douyin. A virtual world that allows users to interact virtually through avatars. Even though a spokesperson believes that it has nothing to do with the metaverse, it is a sign that shows that the Chinese giant is more and more interested in it.