TL;DR
- Samsung’s latest earnings report confirms plans for “XR devices” in 2025.
- The company has already expressed interest in an XR headset, and this suggests it’s still a priority.
- Separately, an old patent application is inspiring speculation about how this new hardware might take shape.
Are we in the early days of an AR/VR/MR renaissance, or just watching the latest attempts of companies trying and failing to make their various extended reality (XR) efforts stick? On one hand, we have rumors about Apple shutting down Vision Pro production, and on the other we’ve got Meta bringing high-quality VR to the masses with the new Quest 3S. A crossroads like this can be a big opportunity for players in a position to take advantage of it, and right now Samsung’s looking like it might be in just the right spot.
Samsung flirted with VR early on with the Gear VR, even partnering with Oculus, before abandoning those efforts at the turn of the decade. But earlier this year, it seemed that the spark had retuned, and we started hearing serious chatter about Samsung’s renewed interest in XR. With even the Play Store getting ready for XR apps, our biggest question has been when we might see this new hardware land, and that’s looking more and more firmly like “sometime next year.”
Companies everywhere are sharing their latest quarterly figures with investors right now, and Samsung is no different. This week in its Q3 report, Samsung expresses one of its 2025 targets for its mobile business as, “Improve connectivity among products, including upcoming XR devices, to further elevate user experiences in the Galaxy ecosystem,” (via Gizmodo).
While that’s still a pretty wide window, it’s nonetheless very reassuring for any XR enthusiasts to hear the company talking about these plans as something it intends to tackle in the very near future, rather than speaking more vaguely about its intent, or with some nebulous, far-off date.
We also can’t help but notice the use of “devices,” plural, there. The company has recently talked about mixed-reality smart glasses, but could we also get something a little more immersive? If there are multiple products in the works, that feels increasingly likely.
So Samsung’s new XR solution is coming, and soon — great. But what form is it going to take? Here, the information we’re looking at is quite a bit shakier, but still pretty interesting. Just make sure you take a moment to appreciate the context this arrives in:
Two years ago, Samsung submitted a patent application in South Korea for a pair of mobile controllers that attach to a central charging dock — and blessedly, that paperwork includes a photo of the hardware in question. SamMobile resurfaced that filing this week, and we have to admit: Those really do look like they could be the controllers you use with an XR headset. The translated text even identifies this as a “Metaverse Controller.”
But because this is a patent, a huge amount of caution is warranted. A patent is far from a guarantee that an idea will be turned into a commercial product — and even if Samsung does intend to build and sell this, we still can’t say with any certainty if this would be a part of its 2025 XR plans. It is interesting to think about, though, isn’t it?
