HTC to launch separate VR business after HTC 10 sales tank

May 6, 2016 08:20 GMT  ·  By

According to a recent rumor, Taiwanese multinational manufacturer of smartphones and tablets, HTC reconsidered its business strategy and launched a VR business, amid unsatisfactory figures regarding the HTC 10 pre-orders.

HTC 10 is off to a rocky start after it reported extremely low pre-orders just 11 days after it was made available on e-commerce platforms, on April 25.

News channel Focus Taiwan showed that the company sold just 251 units in China, which also prompted the Taiwanese multinational manufacturer of smartphones and tablets to recently launch a commercial and increase the popularity of its latest smartphone.

Another smartphone that also failed to impress was the HTC 10 Lifestyle variant, which was intended to be launched only in China. It seems that consumers weren’t too pleased with the product, considering that it has a Snapdragon 652 chipset, which is too much of a downgrade from the standard version’s Snapdragon 820.

HTC 10 Lifestyle is basically a gimped variant of the HTC 10, with lower RAM of just 3 GB, only 32 GB of storage, but the same screen resolution and battery capacity. HTC intended to compete against Huawei by introducing a premium phone at an affordable price, but it seems that it wasn’t a winning business strategy.

The price tag for HTC 10 Lifestyle is about $100 lower than that of the HTC 10 flagship phone, but as figures show, consumers from China aren’t willing to compromise on performance in favor of a few more bucks.

High price tag for the HTC Vive but powerful configuration

One direction in which HTC could go is that of expanding its VR headset segment. A recent rumor states that the company might be considering to spin off its virtual reality segment and launch a separate business. Currently, the top headsets in the VR market are Oculus' Rift and HTC's Vive, which has a higher price tag.

The HTC Vive was unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in March 2015, and it came with a total resolution of 2160 x 1200 pixels and it incorporates a gyro, an accelerometer and a laser position sensor which are used for tracking head position and movement.

The new company is set to conduct a wide range of businesses, including the sale of computer equipment, information software, electronics material and even online retail sales. It will be involved in international trade and warehousing business.