MR Market Emerging as New Battleground between Apple vs. Anti-Apple Group

While Apple is set to release its Vision Pro mixed reality (MR) headset with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) capabilities in 2024, Samsung Electronics, Google, and Qualcomm of the Android group are also working on the development of new MR devices. Industry insiders are expecting a confrontation between Apple and an anti-Apple group just like the current smartphone race.

The Android group, including Samsung Electronics, Google, and Qualcomm, is reportedly developing MR products with the aim of unveiling them within this year at the earliest, according to industry sources on May 7. Google will develop an MR-specific operating system (OS), Samsung MR hardware and Qualcomm MR-specific chipsets.

“We are excited about our new Android collaboration with Samsung Electronics in the domain of immersive XR,” said Sameer Samat, a vice president of product management at Google, at Google’s annual developer conference in May. “We will share more news later this year.” Extended reality, or XR, is an umbrella term for VR, AR, and MR.

Samsung also filed a trademark application for Galaxy Glasses with the Korean Intellectual Property Office in February. Industry insiders are speculating that Samsung’s XR product will be shaped like glasses, rather than ski goggles like Apple’s Vision Pro.

This is the first time the Android group has united for the MR-XR market. In the past, each Android group member company had launched some projects and then abandoned them. Google launched the Daydream Project in 2016 to develop a VR platform for smartphones, but gave it up in 2019. Samsung Electronics, along with Meta subsidiary Oculus, launched the Gear VR Headset in 2014, but has not released a related product since then.

Meta’s industry-leading VR device Quest Series is powered by Android OS rather than an exclusive OS. Apple’s Vision Pro includes Vision OS, a dedicated operating system for MR. Magicleaf, a company that is attracting attention in the AR field, also uses its own Magicleaf OS based on Android, however, Meta’s and Magicleaf’s apps are not compatible despite both being based on Android.

Microsoft, once the standard bearer of the anti-Apple group, is trying to regain ground lost to Google in the mobile business by applying PC-based OSes such as Windows 10 to its AR device, HoloLens, and requesting Meta to use them in Quest.

With the Android group following Apple’s lead in developing MR devices, industry insiders are paying much attention to the growth potential of this market. Market research firm Counterpoint Research expects global MR-XR headset shipments to grow from 18 million units in 2022 to 110 million in 2025 and 1 billion in 2030.