HTC Corp (宏達電) is moving beyond its smartphone business and into the home entertainment sector after reaching an agreement with three professional online gaming teams to promote its brand image.
Team Liquid, Cloud9 and Team SoloMid will carry the HTC banner in professional leagues for games like League of Legends, HTC USA said on its official Twitter account on Saturday.
The Taiwanese company has named two e-sports project managers, Walter Wang and Thomas Chen, to launch a “top-notch” video series with players from the three teams and will offer them the chance to try out some “amazing new HTC devices” in the future, according to each team’s announcement.
FEW DETAILS RELEASED
However, specifics, including the amount spent on the sponsorship, were not disclosed.
HTC yesterday said in an e-mailed statement that it is excited and honored to support the teams, as well as the e-sports community in general.
“E-sports has seen significant growth in the past few years and we see synergy between those who are dedicated to this sport and HTC’s own customer base: people who set their own path and passionately pursue their own brilliance,” the Taoyuan-based handset maker said.
HTC shares gained 1.92 percent to NT$159 yesterday in Taipei trading.
EXPANSION PLANS
On Jan. 7, an HTC executive told the US technology Web site Re/Code that the company was planning to expand into connected devices and entertainment this year, after diversifying its product line last year with the RE action camera.
By developing new categories of both hardware and software, HTC is hoping to transform itself from just a smartphone manufacturer into a “personal tech company,” the Re/Code report said.
The plan was revealed after HTC announced on Jan. 6 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, that it had formed a strategic partnership with the US sports clothing and accessories supplier Under Armour Inc to add a newly launched health and fitness app called UA Record to HTC’s product line.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained