Qualcomm Pulls Plug On Vuforia Augmented Reality Business, Sells Unit To PTC

It's barely been an entire year since Qualcomm introduced its augmented reality SDK Vuforia, and already it's found itself in the hands of another company. Interestingly, it wasn't a company already involved in the AR space (or VR, for that matter) that decided to shell out $65 million for it, but rather PTC, creators of many different design and engineering software solutions, such as Creo and Mathcad.

This is undoubtedly an interesting acquisition by the Massachusetts-based PTC, but given its huge focus on design solutions, it's not hard to imagine how the company is going to take advantage of Vuforia. It could tie it into an already existing product, or simply keep it independent and grow it from there.

This is also an interesting move on Qualcomm's part, as it's rare to see a company offload something so quickly - and one year certainly is quick. This wasn't a hasty decision on the company's part, either, as it's been fishing for bids for a few months.

It's clear that Qualcomm would do better to focus on its mobile business, and markets where its SoCs could be used. Just this past weekend, we wrote about the company's latest efforts in the server space, with its upcoming 24-core ARMv8-A SoC. Last month, we discovered Qualcomm Flight, the company's entry into the drone market. It seems AR doesn't quite fit into where the company wants to put its focus, but you can be sure that VR won't suffer the same fate, and that the company will continue developing some of its future SoCs with the tech in mind.