Spanish Telecom Giant Telefonica Partners With Qualcomm to Develop Joint Metaverse Initiatives

Telefonica, one of the largest telecom carriers in Spain, and Qualcomm, the fabless chip designer, have inked a partnership to advance joint extended reality and metaverse initiatives. Telefonica will use Snapdragon Spaces, a new technology from Qualcomm, to bring these metaverse experiences to its customers. The agreement also includes the possibility of pursuing joint commercial opportunities.

Telefonica, one of the biggest telecom carriers in Spain and Europe, has announced a partnership with Qualcomm, the chip maker, in order to collaborate in the production of metaverse-related initiatives. The agreement establishes that the telecom infrastructure of Telefonica will serve as a platform to deploy experiences produced with Qualcomm technology.

This technology, named Snapdragon Spaces, is a full stack of programs that allow designers to focus on developing these experiences, especially for augmented reality headsets. Spaces is also a device-independent technology, so the metaverses designed using it can be run with any headset on the market, including the Meta Quest line of devices. Telefonica will include this tech in initiatives to be developed via its Metaverse Hub, a location dedicated to Web3, augmented reality, and metaverse initiatives.

About this partnership and what it means for the future of the company, Telefonica’s VP of devices & consumer IoT, Daniel Hernandez, stated:

XR (extended reality) will bring a new dimension to the digital and real world, allowing people to communicate, do business, socialize and be entertained in new ways. We are preparing for this future, building the infrastructure, upgrading equipment, evolving our services, and establishing the partnerships that will allow us to bring innovative new devices and services to customers.

The interest of these two companies in the metaverse and augmented reality tech is not new, as they have previously invested and made partnerships in the area. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon gave his take on the metaverse in May, stating it will be a very big opportunity for the companies involved. The company recently closed a deal with Meta to develop metaverse-specific silicon to be used in Meta’s next line of headsets.

Telefonica has also been involved in metaverse projects already. The company invested an undisclosed amount in Gamium, a Spanish open world, through Wayra, an open innovation platform of the company.

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