HTC has said recently that their focus is on virtual reality or VR. As the smartphone and mobile industry has begun to plateau, it makes sense that the company needs to focus on another area to make a profit. Something HTC hasn’t done in quite a while. HTC has already announced when pre-orders for the HTC Vive will be available. That’s their first VR headset which they’ve partnered with Valve to produce. It’ll go up for pre-order on February 29th. No price has been confirmed just yet, but some are saying it could be around $1500.
News coming out of Taiwan is that HTC’s CEO and Chairwoman, Cher Wang will create a new company for virtual reality. Which would include the Vive. The report also mentions that the new firm for Virtual Reality, would be wholly owned by Wang and HTC. At least at first. The report also mentions that HTC’s former CEO, Peter Chou had started talks about spinning off VR into its own company, before he stepped down in March of 2015 (when Cher Wang took over his CEO duties). In light of this report, HTC’s stock has been rising, and continues to rise at this moment. This tells us that investors agree with that decision. As of now, the stock is up 5.23% sitting at 76.50, and it’ll likely continue to hover in the 76-77 range for the rest of the day.
HTC appears to be all in, when it comes to VR. With them debuting the Vive Pre at CES earlier this month and the Vive consumer units going up for pre-order next month. HTC has also been looking around to see other uses for Virtual Reality. They’ve been looking for partners to use Vive. And actually found one in Audi. Who will be using the Vive to allow potential customers to test drive a vehicle without actually test driving it. Something not a lot of other car manufacturers are doing, and Audi expects to have a few showrooms decked out with the HTC Vive later on this year.
It appears that bring Vive to its own company, even if it is under the HTC umbrella, is a good idea. Investors seem to like the idea, and it would help HTC sell Vive and VR as well as keeping their mobile business out of the way of it.