Consumer electronics company HTC Corp (宏達電) yesterday unveiled the HTC Vive Focus, a standalone virtual-reality (VR) headset, at the Vive Developer Conference in Beijing.
The Vive Focus, promoted as the first of its kind to reach the market, has a wireless, tangle-free design and comes with a Qualcomm Inc Snapdragon 835 processor, a high-resolution active matrix organic LED display and “six-degrees-of-freedom” tracking.
While the Vive Focus is a standalone device that is not connected to a computer or a smartphone, it has many of the same features as a high-end device, HTC said.
Photo: CNA
“You can essentially do most of the things that you could do on a high-end machine on a standalone,” HTC Vive China president Alvin Wang Graylin (汪叢青) said.
HTC has over the past year dominated the VR market in China, with the HTC Vive taking an 82 percent share in the third quarter of this year.
HTC is to continue to focus on the Chinese market for the rest of the year, Wang said, citing the company’s release of the Vive Wave VR open platform in Beijing alongside the Vive Focus.
Vive Wave VR has been described as “Daydream for China,” in reference to Google’s Daydream VR platform.
Vive Wave VR is utilized by the Vive Focus and features content built specifically for the platform by more than 35 Chinese and international VR content developers.
The platform also features an open interface that allows interoperability among numerous mobile VR headsets and accessories.
Twelve hardware partners, including Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Pimax, Nubia Technology Co Ltd (努比亞) and iQiyi (愛奇藝), have reportedly pledged their support for the integration of Vive Wave VR into their future products.
As HTC continues to focus on the Chinese market, it has decided not to launch a standalone VR headset this year that uses Google’s Daydream.
HTC will not be able to launch a Daydream-compatible product in time for the year-end holiday shopping season in the US and Europe, where Daydream is the VR platform of choice, HTC VR new technology division vice president Raymond Pao (鮑永哲) said.
Separately, HTC has issued an invitation to VR and augmented-reality developers worldwide to participate in its Viveport Developer Awards, which are to recognize creativity and innovation in the field, as the company continues its efforts to build its own VR ecosystem.
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