Community Download is a weekly discussion-focused articles series published (usually) every Monday in which we pose a single, core question to you all, our readers, in the spirit of fostering discussion and debate. For today, we’re curious what you think of HTC’s future in the VR industry.
Last week HTC canceled all of their CES appointments and pulled out of the show entirely. In an email a spokesperson said the “new vision for Vive” would be shared soon with Mobile World Congress (MWC) fast-approaching. Now that CES is in the books, it leads us to wonder what’s next for the Taiwan-based tech company.
Back in 2016, with help from Valve, HTC pioneered roomscale VR when the original HTC Vive launched. But after 2019, a year that saw a lackluster Vive Cosmos consumer launch and expanded efforts in the enterprise sector across their Vive Pro Eye and Vive Focus headsets, tides are clearly shifting.
What will happen next for HTC in the VR market? Will they continue to straddle the line between consumer-focused and enterprise-focused, or will they further back out of the consumer market, ceding it to Sony, Facebook, and Valve primarily, and focus mostly on enterprise consumers? Or perhaps they’ll announce a brand new consumer-focused effort for 2020 and surprise everyone instead.
What do you think? Let us know down in the comments below. And if you missed the news from CES you can get caught up in our roundup of the top headlines and watch us discuss the biggest topics on our weekly VR talk show, The VR Download, which airs every Thursday at 10:30AM PT on YouTube.
