Semiconductor giant Qualcomm is seeking to expand its AI tech portfolio with an agreement to purchase custom silicon firm Alphawave IP Group (“Alphawave Semi”) in a deal valued at roughly $2.4 billion. UK-based Alphawave makes chips used in artificial intelligence and data centers. The deal follows months of talks between the San Diego-based Qualcomm and Alphawave, which was identified as an acquisition target in April. “AI inferencing growth is driving demand for Qualcomm’s high-performance energy-efficient compute solutions and this acquisition provides key assets for our expansion into data centers,” Qualcomm explained in disclosing the deal. Continue reading Qualcomm Strikes Deal to Acquire Alphawave for $2.4 Billion

During WWDC at Apple Park in California this week, the company unveiled visionOS 26 updates for its mixed reality Vision Pro headset that will up the ante for both consumer and enterprise users, with new spatial widgets and more realistic avatar Personas among the noteworthy updates. The customizable widgets will appear to blend into a headset wearer’s physical environment, “integrating seamlessly into a user’s space” and reappearing exactly where the user left them each time the Apple Vision Pro is activated. A great deal of effort has gone into improved iPhone integration, including the ability to initiate calls directly from the headset. Continue reading Apple visionOS 2026 Features Spatial Widgets, Better Avatars

Google and Xreal publicly displayed the first eyewear to run Android XR. Developed as Project Aura, the extended reality smart glasses are expected to be available for purchase later this year or in early 2026. Google is also working with Samsung on a headset as part of Project Moohan. Pricing on the Aura glasses wasn’t announced at Google I/O, but they’ll reportedly cost less than the thousand dollar-plus price tags being floated for the Samsung device and Meta’s next-gen smart glasses, code-named Hypernova. At its annual developer conference, Google also showcased glasses being made with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster that won’t feature AR. Continue reading Google Tees-Up Android XR to Take On Meta, Apple Eyewear

Chinese smartphone giant Vivo is entering the XR headset market with a device called the Vivo Vision that is drawing comparisons to Apple’s Vision Pro in name and looks. The headset debut coincides with the announcement of the Vivo Robotics Lab, signaling a strategic expansion beyond mobile phones. Vivo EVP and COO Hu Baishan said that AI and robotics currently represent the height of technological achievement in the digital and physical worlds, and that the mobile phone industry, with its massive consumer base and advanced infrastructure is well-positioned to bridge the two worlds, “blending digital connectivity with physical capabilities.” Continue reading Smartphone Maker Vivo Intros Vision XR and Robotics Group

CES 2025 welcomed over 141,000 attendees from around the globe to Las Vegas. With more than 4,500 exhibitors, including 1,400 startups, and more than 6,000 media attendees, CES highlights the innovation and technology trends addressing global challenges and shaping the future. This year’s show focused on artificial intelligence, unveiling a wave of innovative offerings — whether practical, visionary or experimental. Among the show’s major trends were AI integration across all industries, shifting demographics and purchasing patterns (with Gen Z the one to watch), sustainability and security, and smart devices and smarter homes. ETC@USC attended the conference for live reporting on products and services. Our post-show report features extensive coverage and perspectives related to key creative, business, and technology areas. Continue reading ETC’s CES 2025 Report: Focus on AI Innovation & Integration

Samsung shook things up at Mobile World Congress 2025 with a display of its Project Moohan XR headset, which CNBC confirms will be released this year. While the MWC display was just a teaser, and Samsung remained tight-lipped about its specs, the mirrored goggles generated a lot of coverage, including speculation that Samsung may deploy Sony’s 4K Micro OLEDs in the new device, increasing Mohan’s resolution over the Apple Vision Pro by nearly 2 million pixels per eye and offering superior color, too. Samsung worked with Qualcomm and Google to develop Moohan, which will use the new Android XR operating system. Continue reading New Samsung XR Headset Could Use Sony 4K Micro OLEDs

A year after the commercial release of the Vision Pro mixed reality headset, Apple is making progress adding Apple Intelligence, with visionOS 2.4, available now in developer beta in English with consumer release scheduled for April. The AI boost adds Writing Tools, which allows text composition “from scratch using ChatGPT,” as well as Image Playground and the custom emoji app Genmoji. It also integrates Spatial Gallery, a new Vision Pro app for the iPhone that includes a discovery mechanism for curated 3D movies and a remote-viewable Guest Mode for mobile. Additional features and languages will be added throughout the year. Continue reading Apple Intelligence, Guest Mode Coming to Vision Pro in April

Sony has launched XYN, a platform for the creation and display of spatial content. Pronounced “zin,” XYN is an integrated software and hardware solution that “accurately captures real-world objects, human motion, and backgrounds, recreating them in virtual environments for 3D computer graphics production,” according to Sony. In addition to the XYN Motion Studio, at CES 2025 this month the company shared prototypes for a XYN spatial capture solution and a XYN headset equipped with 4K OLED micro displays and video see-through function that Sony says is intended for production purposes. Continue reading CES: Sony Bows Production Tools for Metaverse, Digital Twins

Play For Dream Technology made a splash at CES 2025 with a new mixed reality headset inspired by the Apple Vision Pro, which the startup described as “the world’s first Android-based spatial computer.” Play For Dream MR has been applauded by some analysts for its user interface, eye tracking, media capture and overall performance. The company, which announced a new strategic partnership with Tobii, is targeting consumers and B2B applications with “customized solutions tailored to meet the diverse needs of various industries,” such as media, entertainment, gaming, medical, healthcare, education, research, automotive and aviation. Continue reading CES: Play For Dream Touts ‘World’s First’ Android MR Headset

There’s a knotty problem present in every single available VR device, and it gives most people a headache or eyestrain when using the device long enough: the distance between your eyes and the displays remains the same no matter how far away an object appears to be. At CES 2025 in Las Vegas this week, Canadian spatial media company CubicSpace demonstrated a software mitigation to this issue, showing us images on a standard 3D display and a stock Meta Quest 3 device, with a before-and-after effect of native pipeline and via their software. Continue reading CES: CubicSpace Demos Solution to a Consistent VR Problem

Blackmagic Design is live with URSA Cine Immersive pre-orders. If it meets its late Q1 2025 ship date the $29,995 the camera will be the first on the market optimized for the Apple Immersive Video (AIV) format compatible with the Apple Vision Pro mixed-reality headset. Currently, there isn’t much content that takes advantage of the Vision Pro’s immersive features. The Cine Immersive captures 3D footage in resolution of 8160 x 7200 per eye at 90 fps. The package includes a fixed-distance lens and 8TB of onboard network storage. Also in Q1, DaVinci Resolve Studio will be updated to support AIV editing. Continue reading URSA Cine Immersive for Apple Vision Pro Set for Q1 at $30K

Google has unveiled Android XR, an operating system for computers and smart glasses powered by Google’s Gemini AI large language model. Samsung confirmed that it will release an extended reality headset that runs on Android XR sometime in 2025. Samsung worked closely with Google and Gemini throughout 2023, leading up to the Galaxy S24 series of smartphones that debuted at CES 2024 last January. Google announced the release of the Android XR SDK Developer Preview kit so new apps can be built and existing ones ported over to the new platform to support Samsung’s new headset and other devices. Continue reading Android XR Powered by Gemini OS for Samsung’s 2025 Headset

James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment has debuted a new unit, Lightstorm Vision, which launches with a deal that sees Meta Quest become its exclusive mixed reality platform. The multiyear deal will see the Hollywood heavyweight partnering with Meta Platforms “to scale the creation of world-class 3D entertainment experiences spanning live sports and concerts, feature films, and TV series featuring big-name IP on Meta Quest,” Meta announced. In addition to producing original content for the Meta Quest, Lightstorm Vision will use its tech to help third parties create new programming and potentially conform existing work through MR conversion. Continue reading Cameron’s Lightstorm Vision Partners with Meta to Advance MR

From exercising in outer space to navigating via Google Earth VR, HTC has made inroads with its Vive headsets. The new mixed reality model, the Vive Focus Vision XR, has color passthrough and 2448 x 2448 resolution per-eye. Aiming squarely at the enterprise and high-end gaming markets, it accommodates tethered PCVR or standalone play, while IPD eye tracking makes it suitable for high-volume environments, like training or industrial use. Available for $999 for the consumer platform and $1,299 for enterprise, this latest iteration in the Focus Vision series is also made for location-based experiences. Continue reading HTC’s $1000 Vive Focus Vision XR is Built for Work and Fun

Apple has released a public demo of the 4M AI model it developed in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). The technology debuts seven months after the model was first open-sourced, allowing informed observers the opportunity to interact with it and assess its capabilities. Apple says 4M was built by applying masked modeling to a single unified Transformer encoder-decoder “across a wide range of input/output modalities — including text, images, geometric and semantic modalities, as well as neural network feature maps.” Continue reading Apple Launches Public Demo of Its Multimodal 4M AI Model