According to the latest revelations from Taiwanese media Digitimes, HTC will return to the smartphone market after four years of silence, and its VR department HTC Vive is developing a smartphone focusing on VR/AR functions, which may be released as early as next month.
If the news is true, the former pioneer of the smartphone market is expected to integrate its VR/AR technology with the smartphone business and return to the smartphone market table.
People of different ages have somewhat different perceptions of HTC, for the post-00s and post-10s, it may be just a VR headset manufacturer most of the time, and in the impression of the post-80s and post-90s, it was the first smartphone brand to sweep the world.
Time back 10 years ago, global smartphone shipments reached 521 million in 2011, the smartphone era officially arrived, that year HTC ranked second in the world with a market share of 21%, second only to Apple, which has a market share of 29%. In the same year, HTC's market value reached $33.8 billion, overpowering established mobile phone manufacturers such as Nokia and BlackBerry, and founder Wang Xuehong became the new richest man in Taiwan.
However, time has changed, since the release of the flagship U12+ in May 2018, HTC has only released two machines in four years, one is the U20 5G released in June 2020, and the other is the Desire 21 Pro 5G released in January 2021, which has attracted too much attention. HTC's former rival, Apple, is still the hegemon of the mobile phone market, ranking first with a market share of 20% in 2021, followed by 18% of Samsung and 16% of Xiaomi.
When HTC was in the limelight that year, its founder Wang Xuehong once said: "If there are only two mobile phone manufacturers left in the future, HTC must be one of them." Nowadays, this sentence is rarely mentioned. Just like Nokia and Motorola are difficult to regain their former glory, it is indeed unrealistic for HTC to return to the smartphone sales list again, but this does not prevent HTC from returning to the table in a different way, and at the moment when the concept of meta-universe is in full swing, HTC's VR/AR technology, which has been deeply cultivated for many years, is expected to become the entry point for its return to the mobile phone market.
Why did you launch this phone?
According to the information officially revealed by HTC, this upcoming VR/AR smartphone obviously exists as a supporting device for its meta-universe platform Viveverse. Charles Huang, vice president of HTC, said at the just-concluded Mobile World Congress (MWC 2022) that the smartphone will work in tandem with Viveverse and be equipped with metaversic-related features.
The so-called Viveverse is actually an open source metaverse platform composed of various interactive scenarios, applications and games launched by HTC VIVE, which integrates VR/XR, 5G, blockchain, NFT and other technologies, supports cross-platform access for smartphones, PCs, tablets and VIVE Flow glasses users, and users can even import NFTs in Viverse.
Therefore, HTC is obviously not only to return to the mobile phone market, but also to equip the meta-universe platform Viveverse with portable hardware, which is characterized by VR/AR-related cutting-edge technology, but in terms of comprehensive performance, it may be difficult to match other mobile phone manufacturers that are more perfect in technology, supply chain and ecology.
Another potential reason is that at the moment when the concept of metaversity is popular, HTC has expanded its VR/AR technology landing scene in the mobile phone market, which is conducive to its return to the game as a technology supplier and save the decline in revenue.
Since HTC shifted its business center from the mobile phone market to the VR/AR field, its mobile phone market share has fallen all the way, and in 2017, it has less than 1%, and has to sell its mobile phone business and assets to Google, in 2020, HTC's revenue is 1.33 billion, but the loss is as high as 1.38 billion, and the annual revenue is less than half a month's revenue of Airpods.
VR/AR new business is limited by the lack of market volume and application scenarios, which has been in a state of loss and profit, coupled with the rapid increase in shipments of rival Meta quests such as competition, which has caused great pressure on HTC's market share. HTC's 2019 annual report shows that the revenue of VR products ranks third in the world, with a market share of about 13.6%, but by the first quarter of 2021, according to IDC data, its shipments have slipped to fifth place, and the market rate is only 2%.
In a nutshell, HTC's launch of VR/AR smartphones may be a correction to the past business route, after all, even HTC's former CEO Yves Maitre has publicly stated that the wrong investment in VR technology in the past few years has led to HTC's loss of innovation in mobile phones. Then in the case of wanting to take into account both the mobile phone market and the VR/AR market, the launch of a smart phone can be matched with its own VR/AR ecology, and the retreat can explore the commercial monetization opportunities of VR/AR technology in the mobile phone market, and maybe usher in a new situation of left and right.
Some people may be curious about the product form of VR/AR smartphones, in fact, HTC launched the AR glasses Vive Flow last year has begun to emerge, users can connect the headset device through the Android mobile phone, download the corresponding VIVE APP can wirelessly transmit the mobile phone interface and all data to the VR headset, so as to achieve the control of all the APP applications on the phone, while the mobile phone can also be used as a handle.
Compared with Vive Flow, which can be matched with any Android phone, HTC's upcoming VR/AR mobile phone is likely to be a modified and upgraded model, and the built-in VR/AR related applications and functions on the mobile phone are more abundant, and the degree of compatibility with its own ecology is higher.
At the moment when the integrated machine head is popular and lightweight glasses are not yet mature, using smart phones with VR/AR glasses can greatly reduce the weight of glasses and improve the performance of glasses, which is a bit of a "mobile host" VR flavor, which is a new development direction in the vr/AR field.
At the MWC2022 World Communications Conference, which just ended a few days ago, HTC Chairman Wang Xuehong gave a keynote speech called "Delivering a New World".
In the future, whether the veteran hardware manufacturer that launched the first Android smartphone and released the first virtual reality headset can really create a new world again as its founder said, its pioneering spirit is still worth learning from many domestic enterprises - this is the spirit that an enterprise should have.