This month, we’re excited to usher augmented reality into a new era. On 30th June, our Berlin campus will be hosting the onboarding day for the all-new hubraum Snapdragon Spaces Program. Participating startups will enjoy access to a dedicated mentor from Deutsche Telekom as well as the latest Lenovo smart glasses and Motorola smartphones to test their software on.
We couldn’t be prouder to be partnering with Qualcomm Technologies Inc. on this program — this wireless technology giant will be offering participating startups an open, cross-device horizontal platform and ecosystem to deliver the tools to bring developers’ idea to life. This addresses a key issue: previously, one of the problems of building AR experiences has been building for a specific device. Developers had to build for the Magic Leap or the HoloLens or an Nreal Light and the engineering process was different for each. Fortunately, Qualcomm’s middleware software allows developers to build an application which can target any of those devices easily. At the beginning of June, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. opened Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform for developers to download — which means it’s available to anyone and everyone now at https://spaces.qualcomm.com/. Downloading the Snapdragon Spaces platform will unlock the foundational tools to create 3D applications for AR glasses from the ground-up, add headworn AR features to existing 2D Android smartphone applications and more.
Together with Qualcomm Technologies Inc., we’ll be giving augmented reality startups utilizing the Snapdragon Spaces™ XR Developer Platform access to our futuristic technology and business networks so that these startups can refine their products and get early access to potential customers.
The Snapdragon Spaces program will take place over four months, beginning with our onboarding day — a day that will include allocating each startup a mentor from Deutsche Telekom; deep dives into the program and in-depth group sessions. The program has sourced startups in four focus areas: social and communication; gaming and entertainment; fitness and wellness; education and training. So far, 17 startups from all over the world (the USA, Israel, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Trinidad & Tobago and more) have pitched our jury and eleven of those have been confirmed as being enrolled on the program. In October, we’ll hold a final demo day where participating startups will be able to demonstrate their products and services in front of a live audience — stay tuned for more on this.
So far, our participants’ ideas include a VR environment allowing users to play electronic music in the metaverse (Swiss startup PatchXR), a no-code platform allowing anyone to build 3D experiences (American startup Zoe Immersive Inc); a solution addressing the pain points for seniors learning musical instruments (Trinidad & Tobago startup Dingole LTD); a multiplayer virtual entertainment space where up to 40 people can gather (Germany’s Spree Interactive GmBh). Also along for the ride is an agnostic cloud streaming platform for XR devices (Bulgarian startup QuarkXR), an AR storytelling app encouraging emotional intelligence in children (Germany’s Tiny Giant Heroes), an effortless way of accessing your remote devices via XR from anywhere (American startup vSpatial, Inc.), a Spanish medical animation studio (3For Science), and a startup focusing on creation of novel, immersive tours through augmented reality technology (Germany’s ZAUBAR).
As you can see, imagination isn’t in short supply — we’re hoping to fuel innovation transfer for these startups, giving participants access to a truly global market and helping them take their idea to the next level.