Qualcomm has sold its augmented reality business for $65 million

Qualcomm has gone ahead and sold off its augmented reality business for a hefty $65 million. The former Qualcomm subsidiary is known as Vuforia, and it had been under the chip maker's wing for the last few years, creating tools for developers to create AR content for smart devices. Right now, Vuforia supports several developer tools, including the Unity Engine, Apple's XCode and Eclipse.

In total, Vuforia technology is used in 20,000 apps which have seen two hundred million installs world-wide, according to The Inquirer. However, despite this apparent success, Vuforia has been passed on to the US company PTC, which specialises in 2D and 3D design software.

This acquisition will help PTC develop new design software and innovate in new areas thanks to augmented reality. In the statement regarding the acquisition, PTC CEO, Jim Heppelmann said: “Because of what IoT is enabling, more and more products are now a mixture of digital and part physical content. So, naturally, the ways in which we interact with these products will evolve toward a mixed-reality model that blends physical and digital interactions.”

This all comes just a few weeks after Microsoft announced that its augmented reality headset, the Hololens, will be available for developers early next year. Qualcomm also recently began sampling 24-core ARM processors. 

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KitGuru Says: Augmented reality is a pretty big undertaking. Qualcomm didn't really confirm why it sold Vuforia but it will be interesting to see if the chip maker attempts to get in to augmented or virtual reality devices again in the future. 

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