Rumours that mobile manufacturers HTC may be seeking to spin-off their Virtual Reality business have been confirmed following an address by HTC President for Global Sales Chia-lin Chang to shareholders this week. During the latest general shareholder meeting Chia-lin Chang stated that establishing an independent subsidiary would drive equity investment and strategic partnerships.
HTC do not view this move as a withdrawal from the global VR market however, a position which was reinforced by follow-up comments:
"VR is a very important technology for HTC, and it is not difficult for HTC to generate profits from the technology as there will be a proliferation of VR applications in the education, healthcare, shopping and entertainment sectors over the next 10 years, Wang said."
HTC are manufacturers of the VIVE, one of two Head Mounted Displays which currently lead the market in providing high-quality VR experiences to consumers. The VR market still remains immature with no one solution clearly dominant, and recent efforts by Oculus to lock down content may have made HTC concerned that it was signing up for a battle between two competing standards. By divesting itself of its VR arm HTC minimises their exposure to risk, and makes the case for developing products which are platform agnostic and well suited to their core mobile phone business.
Source: Digitimes
