Here’s Why Google Should Buy Vuforia From Qualcomm
As Re/code’s Ina Fried wrote yesterday, Qualcomm is thinking about spinning off or selling its augmented reality platform, Vuforia.
That would be a big deal for the nascent community of software developers making applications for AR, which is expected to grow to a $120 billion market by 2020. In May, Apple bought Vuforia’s biggest competition, Metaio, shutting down the public face of the company and bringing its team in-house. Vuforia now claims to have more than 175,000 developers registered on its platform.
According to several executives working in augmented reality, if Qualcomm is going to sell Vuforia to another company (and not spin it out into an independent entity as it did with Gimbal), the best home for Vuforia would be Google.
Other possible acquirers active in the AR space include Intel, which has a computer vision platform called RealSense; HP, which runs an AR platform slightly smaller than Vuforia called Aurasma; or Microsoft, which is exploring how Windows 10 might support augmented reality — and its close cousin, mixed reality — via the upcoming HoloLens glasses.
That might be Apple, but it’s something Google has proven it can do. In addition, Google has the market clout of Android and the technical expertise of initiatives like Project Tango and Google Glass, the latter of which is said to be getting an overhaul behind closed doors under the leadership of Nest CEO Tony Fadell.
See the full story here: http://recode.net/2015/09/05/heres-why-google-should-buy-vuforia-from-qualcomm/