HTC is believed to be toying with the idea of selling off its entire Vive virtual reality headset division to infuse some much-needed cash to their main smartphone making business. As is already well known, the Taiwanese firm has emerged just a shadow of its former self during the last few years.
Things have boiled down to such dire straits that most buyers have come to think of any Android phone to be almost a Samsung exclusive. The once famous HTC as a brand seems to have vanished from public domain without a trace. A U11 sporting the latest and the best specifications and sporting some unique features as squeezable sides do not seem enough anymore to have a sizeable impact on buyers.
In contrast, HTC’s virtual reality division exemplified by the Vive headset unit has been a surprise success and continues to be so. The VR segment also happens to be one of the hottest and the most promising right now, with most tech firms making huge investments in the division.
HTC had also reduced the price of its Vive headset to just about $200 to find more buyers. It also happens to be one of the highest selling in its domain, with more than 190,000 having sold in the first quarter itself. That again isn’t a bad figure given the size of the entire VR segment as a whole that still can be considered to be in its infancy.
Meanwhile, HTC is also reported to be working on a new standalone VR headset that however would be a China exclusive. That is not all as the company is also engaged with Google in developing a new standalone VR headset based on the Google virtual reality platform.
Interestingly, HTC is engaged with another prestigious Google project, that of manufacturing one of the second generation Pixel handset, LG being the other company manufacturing the larger Pixel phone tentatively named Pixel XL 2. So while that ensures a steady flow of fund for some time, those might still prove to be barely enough.
In fact, such is the desperate state of affairs within HTC that the company could even put itself up for sale in its entirety, some analysts opined. However, that surely could be the very last option for the company to ever exercise given the almost negligible brand visibility they now have. As they say, desperate times call for desperate measures and it will be interesting to see what future has in store for the once famous brand.
