ITWire

"The real power of vision based AR is that you are interacting with the real world and that requires a massive amount of processing power. With vision based AR you are processing a live video feed at 30 frames per second, at whatever resolution the camera has," Pierre-Jerome said.

"So you definitely need a powerful graphics processor to do that. Then once you have identified what you want to superimpose you are rendering a 3D image or model on top of it and you are manipulating that in space in real time. That is a lot of processing. Certainly your typical feature phone cannot do this and your entry level smartphone cannot do this."

US analyst, Rob Enderle, has branded AR as Qualcomm's secret weapon saying: "The mobile industry will soon undergo a massive consolidation of the smartphone/tablet space. We simply have too many [chipset] vendors and Intel's focused entry later this year should force the ARM vendors to merge, some to fail, and only the strongest will survive.

"Currently, the strongest contender is Qualcomm. While the company boasts a number of advantages in terms of processor performance, wireless capability, and massive market presence - Qualcomm's strongest qualification may be its leadership in augmented reality."

 

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