Qualcomm to divest Vuforia augmented reality business

Qualcomm has announced that it is selling its augmented reality technology. The platform named Vuforia will be sold to PTC, a software company. Qualcomm announced earlier this year that it had to reorganize.

The sale was confirmed on Qualcomm’s website. A Qualcomm spokesperson told Fierce Wireless that the augmented reality branch is being sold for an amount of $65 million, approximately 57 million euros. The two companies hope to close the transaction by the end of this year. It is not known what plans copper PTC, a software company, has with Vuforia.

Qualcomm started developing Vuforia five years ago with the aim of providing a software platform for augmented reality. According to the company itself, there are more than 175,000 registered developers who together have created about 20,000 apps. Those apps would have been installed more than 200 million times in total, and can be developed for Android and iOS, among others. Qualcomm has posted an overview of the available apps on its website. The software will continue to work after the acquisition and developers will retain their support, Qualcomm promises.

It’s not clear why Vuforia is being sold, but it likely has something to do with Qualcomm’s reorganization. The chipmaker wants to cut operating costs, which has probably put augmented reality on a side track.