Qualcomm made a major extended reality (XR) play in Europe, opening new laboratories across six cities as part of a commitment to boost R&D and engineering, and increase access to the technology.

The US chip company stated the move provided further evidence of its desire to make XR the future of mobile computing and the labs will focus on key technology development areas including hand tracking, gesture control, 3D mapping and localisiation services, in addition to multi-user experiences and image recognition.

Qualcomm outlined an intention to add more labs in the future.

The wider goal is to design “lightweight and sleek” glasses while boosting its XR developer platform to build experiences across consumer, retail, industrial, enterprise, education and healthcare.

Qualcomm explained it wants to bring XR to the masses, while highlighting how its work would help to “make the metaverse a reality”.

Enrico Salvatori, SVP and president at Qualcomm Europe, said the opportunities for XR are significant and it wanted to combine “Europe’s rich R&D and leadership” in the field with its labs.

“Brilliant minds are already working at speed to realise our vision of XR and bring a plethora of revolutionary experiences to everyone from consumers, healthcare and industrial,” he said.