Chip development at MX separately from DS division
Actively recruiting design personnel for US R&D base
Neeraj Parikh, Managing Director, Intel
System LSI Division Reviewing ‘Maha Edge’

Samsung Electronics is independently developing high-performance semiconductors for next-generation extended reality (XR) devices. It is expected to engage in fierce technology competition with Apple, which introduced a chip dedicated XR chip With the release of the ‘Vision Pro’.
According to industry reports on the 7th, Samsung Electronics is developing XR-only chips at the System-on-Chip (SoC) Architecture Lab of Samsung Research America (SRA), a United States research and development (R&D) base. It is reported that the SoC Architecture Lab is actively recruiting chip design experts to increase the number of XR chip researchers. Chip development is overseen by the Mobile Experience (MX) Division, which is responsible for the XR device business. The head of development is Neeraj Parik, a chip expert that Samsung recruited from Intel last year.

Samsung Electronics is currently forming a technology alliance with Qualcomm, a global semiconductor design company, to equip XR devices with high-performance chips. The chip that Samsung is developing is expected to be the semiconductor that will be used in the next-generation XR devices that will be released after the collaboration with Qualcomm. The development of the XR chip can also be interpreted as meaning that Samsung Electronics is actively preparing for the XR business as a future business. Samsung Electronics is also reportedly planning to unveil a new XR platform to the public within the year to take the lead in the XR market.
Samsung Electronics has started its own development of chips for extended reality (XR) devices because it believes that it can defeat rivals such as Apple and Meta only if it has its own semiconductors that can perform high-level calculations. Experts predict that as artificial intelligence (AI) models become more powerful, the demand for XR devices, which are devices that can implement them, will inevitably increase.
Samsung Electronics to launch smart glasses in 2026… Raise a cash cow that connects AI phones

This is also the reason why the MX Division, which is in charge of the smartphone business within Samsung Electronics, has started to develop XR chips separately from the Semiconductor (DS) Division. This means that they have declared a technology competition to preempt the cash cow that connects smartphones. In fact, according to market research firm Markets and Markets, the global XR market revenue is expected to nearly triple from $40.1 billion in 2023 to $111.5 billion in 2028.
On the 7th, an official from the semiconductor industry explained, “Apple’s Vision Pro has been unexpectedly sluggish, and LG Electronics has begun to adjust its pace, but on the other hand, it is necessary to widen the technology gap now in order to take the lead in the market in the future.”
The contours of Samsung’s XR roadmap are also slowly emerging. Noh Tae-moon, president of Samsung Electronics’ MX division, made a surprise announcement at the Galaxy Z Fold 6 launch event on the 10th of last month, saying, “We will introduce the XR platform within the year.” Samsung’s flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S25, which will be released next year, is also rumored to drastically change the design of the device to implement XR performance. An official from the electronics industry explained, “Samsung Electronics is focusing on research and development (R&D) with the goal of launching smart glasses in 2026 that break away from the shape of existing XR devices.”

Samsung’s main rivals for XR devices are Apple and Meta. What they have in common is that they are developing their own application processors (APs) that act as the brains of XR devices. Apple installed its self-developed AP ‘M2’ and graphics chip ‘R1’ in the Vision Pro, which was released at the beginning of the year. Meta has unveiled its own AP using TSMC’s 4nm (nanometer, billionth of a meter) process to the public through a smart glass project called ‘Aria’.
Another semiconductor industry insider explained, “In order to prevent motion sickness when wearing XR devices and to create devices that can perform high-performance calculations at a minimized size, it will be more necessary to develop our own chips rather than relying on the supply of specific semiconductor partners.”
The System LSI division of the DS division is not involved in the development of the MX division’s own XR chip-, but is reportedly reviewing new chip designs to respond to the emergence of new mobile devices. As an extension of the announcement of the AI inference chip ‘Mach 1’ in March this year, the division is reported to have started to establish a plan for the development of ‘Mach Edge’, a chip for on-device AI devices. It is also reported that a review is underway on whether to develop the Mach Edge for mobile devices or for battlefields.