Taiwan-based smartphone brand HTC Corp (宏達電), which has entered the virtual reality (VR) business, has benefited from enthusiasm over the metaverse concept to post a more than 20 percent month-on-month increase in sales.
HTC said in a statement on Thursday that it posted NT$576 million (US$20.8 million) in consolidated sales last month, up 24.4 percent from a month earlier, the second consecutive month-on-month increase on the back of increased shipments of its latest VR gadget, the portable Vive Flow.
Analysts consider the Vive Flow to be HTC’s attempt to embrace the so-called “metaverse,” a concept that has been talked up by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg since July last year. The idea refers to a digital world in which people can move between devices and communicate in a virtual environment.
Photo: Wang Yi-hung, Taipei Times
However, last month’s sales figure was down 6.35 percent from a year earlier, as competition in the global smartphone market escalated, analysts said.
HTC’s consolidated sales last year stood at NT$5.253 billion, down 9.52 percent from one year earlier, providing further evidence of stiff competition in the smartphone market.
HTC Vive Asia-Pacific general manager Charles Huang (黃昭穎) said the Vive Flow is smaller and lighter than its predecessors, which should help the device generate more sales than its counterparts in the Vive headset series.
The Vive Flow has an expansive 100-degree field of view, 3.2K resolution, and full 3D spatial audio that can connect to Bluetooth earphones, according to HTC product specifications.
Although HTC has been keen to explore business opportunities in the VR market, the company plans to continue its focus on the smartphone market and plans to unveil new models later this year, Huang said.
HTC said that it introduced new VR hardware and content at CES, one of the world’s leading electronics exhibitions, which ends today in Las Vegas. Products HTC is featuring include the first inside-out tracking device used by the Vive Focus 3, and healthcare content used by the Vive Flow.
The company’s Vive Pro 2 won the CES 2020 Innovation Award for demonstrating images through its premium 5K fidelity and 120-degree field of view, HTC said.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
RSS