At yesterday's Samsung Unpacked 2023 event, Samsung's TM Roh brought Qualcomm's CEO and Google's SVP of Platforms and Ecosystems on stage to announce their collaboration for building the next XR experiences. Knowing that it's possible that Apple will be introducing their first generation mixed reality headset at the WWDC23 event, Samsung wanted to take the opportunity to clarify that the Qualcomm and Google will be collaborating on next-gen headset devices and experiences. TM Roh however didn't elaborate on what that could translate into.

Samsung will of course wait and see what direction Apple's first generation Mixed Reality Headset will take before getting their engineering teams to quickly match it. Just prior to yesterday's event, Samsung's TM Roh president and head of Samsung’s mobile experience business briefly spoke with the Washington Post on their collaboration with Qualcomm and Google on next-gen XR experiences. Yet it was really nothing more than generalities being presented.

Extended reality, or XR, is a blanket term to describe a handful of related technologies that include virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality. And because these technologies reflect different ways of physically looking at your software, services and the world around you, Samsung’s announcement all but confirms the company is developing a new wearable display or headset. That's because their earlier attempts at a VR headset failed (Galaxy Gear VR and Odyssey with Windows).

How general a statement is this: TM Roh, "So we have also been making similar preparations, no less than any others." Roh would not elaborate on the specifics of Samsung’s first new XR product but said that "We’re getting there, but we’re not too far away."

Roh added: "For the chipset, it is going to be a strategic collaboration with Qualcomm. The hardware will be us. And the software, he added, will be provided by Google. For the ecosystem, we were trying to determine which platform to work with, and in the end, we decided that it was going to be Google," referring to a new, previously unannounced version of the Android operating system meant specifically to power devices such as wearable displays. Google and Qualcomm separately confirmed the partnership on XR.

Lastly, Roh noted that "We believe that the ecosystem has to be somewhat ready for the product to be launched and for the product to be successful as well. And as you know, there have been many attempts by other companies so far, but not as successful as had been hoped because perhaps the ecosystem was not as ready as it should have been."

Did you actually believe that Samsung would provide details about their next-gen XR headset ahead of Apple's announcement that will guide their development. The interview was a nothing burger. For more, read the full report by The Washington Post.