Qualcomm sells Vuforia AR business to PTC for $65 million

Internet of Things software maker PTC said it has agreed to acquire the Vuforia business from Qualcomm Connected Experiences, a subsidiary of Qualcomm, for $65 million.

Vuforia is a five-year-old mobile vision platform for augmented reality (AR), a technology used most commonly in retail applications in order to meld real-world and computer-generated material.

PTC plans to couple Vuforia with its IoT and analytics platforms. The ultimate goal seems to center around creating a converged workplace technology platform that taps into both AR and IoT.

For instance, PTC said the platform will be geared toward finding "new ways to design products, to monitor and control products, and to instruct operators and technicians in the appropriate methods of use and service."

Qualcomm has said Vuforia is supported by more than 175,000 registered developers and has powered over 20,000 apps. Even so, broad-based consumer adoption of AR has been slow, and perhaps out shined by the prospects of full-blown virtual reality. However, the release of Microsoft's HoloLens could eventually help change that.

PTC noted that the acquisition also includes Vuforia's developer ecosystem and is expected to close by the end of the year.

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Images via Qualcomm