Together, they want to advance immersive technologies like virtual reality and extended reality. The partnership is expected to help ByteDance catch up to Tencent and Baidu in the metaverse space.
According to the South China Morning Post, American Qualcomm has decided to partner with ByteDance, the Chinese giant that owns TikTok, in order to advance immersive technologies that will be used to develop the metaverse.
They want to advance immersive technologies
Along with Pico Interactive, a virtual reality headset company, Qualcomm and ByteDance are collaborating on hardware and software to prepare for the metaverse.
Together, they want to advance immersive technologies such as virtual reality and extended reality (a term that refers to all combined real and virtual environments and human-computer interactions generated by computer technology).
Cristiano Amon, president and CEO of Qualcomm, said on Feb. 28, 2022, at a press conference on the sidelines of MWC Barcelona that “Qualcomm is set to collaborate with ByteDance on hardware and software to enable a global XR ecosystem.”
Liang Rubo, CEO of ByteDance, appeared in a video at Qualcomm’s announcement to express the Chinese company’s “commitment to this project alongside a recognized extended reality company.”
ByteDance is increasingly interested in the metaverse
Pico’s latest virtual reality headset, the Neo 3 Pro, is already equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR2 chip. This partnership should allow ByteDance to catch up with Tencent and Baidu in the metaverse.
Between them, the two Chinese companies account for more than half of the top 10 global patent filers for virtual and augmented reality technologies over the past two years.
Other Chinese tech companies that made the top 10 include smartphone maker Oppo, Ping An Insurance Co, SenseTime or Huawei Technologies Co, formerly China’s largest smartphone vendor. With the recent acquisition of Pico Interactive and this partnership with Qualcomm, ByteDance is officially putting a 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 if a spokesperson believes that this has nothing to do with the metaverse, it is a sign that the Chinese giant is becoming more and more interested in it.