Recently, Samsung’s dive into the XR headset market has been stealing headlines. In a storyline that mirrors the rise of Apple’s Vision Pro, the Moohan headset was finally publicly revealed following years of speculation at the tail end of 2024—with further reveal coming in the first month of 2025.
Samsung is on a mission, and the timing of Samsung’s AI-powered AR device comes at an interesting time. Attraction towards AR is on the rise, namely through AR smartphone services but also through the modern-day evolution of smart glasses, which see immersive wearables become smaller and more powerful, thanks to various integrated solutions like AI and XR streaming. According to industry champions, this evolution will drive adoption in consumer and enterprise markets.
Samsung is entering the market with many tools and advantages. Namely, one is market observation across the past 3 years – a time period which is highly relevant to Samsung XR, but we will touch on this shortly – in the past 3 years, the AR and broader XR market has been through many changes from Metaverse marketing highs and lows, then the steady stream of significant technology vendors debuting XR headsets – with a mixture of success including firms such as Apple, Meta, Lenovo, XREAL, HTC, Microsoft, and countless others.
By observing the market’s steady but rocky rise, Samsung can learn many lessons via observation. The XR market is still growing, but pitfalls are prevalent despite the successes of particular firms and deployments. XR technology is new and can be disruptive from many angles, such as end-user implementation to hardware/software vendors developing tomorrow’s technology; overcoming initial adoption pain points will secure an XR firm’s place in the industry.
Will years past prove educational to Samsung as they roll out the Moohan device? Time will tell; however, Samsung has more fuel to push Moohan forward.
That fuel comes from the Glaxay ecosystem, a tent pole in Samsung’s future XR hardware ambitions. Samsung brings a broader technology ecosystem that can help introduce its large Galaxy user base to XR wearables. Additionally, with divisions like Samsung Heavy Industries, there is significant potential for the Moohan device to make an impact, thanks to an existing user base and hardware across various sectors, not just in the consumer space.
Moreover, more recently, at Unpakced 2025, Samsung showed off its mobile AI ecosystem, which provides services to aid with productivity and everyday use cases.
Competitors like Meta and Apple equally have the same leverage as Samsung – such as Meta AI or the iOS ecosystem – but with Smasung’s recent entry, the firm may take from the past year’s mistakes and successes to bring a new device to market with the help from its technology portfolio.
However, behind all these points, one core technology may fuel the Moohan device in Samsung’s native South Korea.
Samsung South Korean 5G Hyperconnectivity Plan
In 2022, Samsung invested significantly in dedicated 5G networks in South Korea. This investment supports the ongoing development of digital twins, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality hardware.
Whether it’s the Moohan XR headset, the new Mobile AI, or other technologies showcased by Samsung at CES and Unpacked, the company appears to be leveraging its extensive technology portfolio to establish a foundation for its recent innovations.
This gives Samsung a considerable advantage in deploying its Moohan headset—an advantage that other emerging AR smart glasses vendors may not have access to.
Looking deeper into the original press release, Samsung noted its goals of providing South Korea with a private 5G ecosystem to fuel infrastructures for digital twins, autonomous vehicles, AI, and AR, namely for non-telecom operators.
At the time, Yong Chang, Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics, explained:
Private 5G networks will enable progressive changes across all industry verticals. Applications like digital twins, autonomous vehicles, AI and AR are only a glimpse of the plethora of use cases Samsung’s 5G can bring to life. Samsung understands the unique needs of enterprises and is capable of delivering optimized network experiences. We are excited to help drive the private 5G ecosystem in Korea.
The Samsung press release was keen to underline the importance of AI in this infrastructure for emerging technologies—a promise that has aged like wine now that genAI has taken over the technology landscape. This includes Samsung’s own Mobile AI framework, which is powering many use cases, such as the ones initially laid out by Samsung in 2022: energy, safety, water resource management, medical services, and medical education. More recently, Samsung highlighted AI in some of these sectors during CES.
In 2022, Samsung showcased some XR use cases already deployed in the region, such as Korea Electric Power Corporation digital twins, Korea Water Resources Corporation virtual simulations, Ewha Womans University Mokdong Hospital virtual collaboration, and Samsung Medical Center AR smart glasses training.
These examples underpin the success Samsung can have in enterprise sectors thanks to the firm’s technology and partner portfolio, a sentiment shared by Cam Stevens, CEO and Lead Consultant at Pocketknife Group, during a 2024 edition of the Big XR News Show:
What I think is really interesting is that the Galaxy Ring was launched at this same event, and being able to leverage the Galaxy ring to be able to interface with the [XR] device rather than two controllers where both your hands. Each part is part of the puzzle, and each part has a use case to play and to extend users to spatial from those traditional interfaces or more recent interfaces. They’ll be using the Galaxy watch, the Galaxy ring, the phones, and the XR device. It’s just an extension to get spatial, and who knows what will happen next? – It will be interesting to see how they choose to go to market within the broader Samsung Electronics brand. I’m not 100 percent sure how Samsung set up as a company, but there’s Samsung Heavy Industries, for example, who make oil and gas facilities. Apple is obviously far more consumer-focused, and all Apple products are designed to improve the human experience regardless of whether it’s at work or not. It’ll be really interesting to see.
Samsung’s Korean hyperconnectivity roadmap doesn’t clearly reach the states. Samsung is also not exclusively developing Moohan for Korean audiences; the English language promotion clarifies that.
However, the regional development does show a regional support network for Samsung’s XR endeavour that may fuel broader worldwide hardware deployments, a key asset competitors lack.
More Recent Samsung 5G Developments
A notable development in Sasmsung’s 5G-powered emerging technology framework came in late 2024 when the firm collaborated with KT Corporation to deploy a Smart Naval Port for the Republic of Korean Navy.
The move sees Samsung leverage its 5G networks to support the Republic of Korean Navy with various emerging technologies, namely digital twins. This means that the Republic of Korea Navy is leveraging RT3D workflows for management and strategy development, leveraging insights from emerging technology to optimise the naval base’s resilience, efficiency, adaptability, and autonomy.
While the press release does not outline XR hardware specifically, collaboration over digital twins and other RT3D assets is a leading use case for XR headsets—like Moohan—so the foundation is there. Moreover, with the rise of XR streaming, smaller form-factor devices will be able to support the use of system-intensive digital twin assets; a 5G network is another asset in that future.
Simon Lee, Vice President and Head of B2B·B2G Business Development Group, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics, added:
In collaboration with KT, we are excited to deploy Korea’s first Private 5G at a Naval base. This project exemplifies our ongoing commitment to enhance and unlock the potential of 5G to meet every customer’s needs.
Moreover, in the 2024 press release, Samsung outlined its dedication to using 5G as a tool to introduce new emerging technologies for workflows in hospitals, universities, construction sites, and military and local government agencies—perhaps laying a foundational layer for AR adoption in Korea all starting from that 2022 5G framework kickoff.
