As you for sure know, this Saturday I have been one of the hosts of the Virtual Reality Day organized by Bob Fine. I have invited and moderated some amazing speakers: Gianluigi Perrone, Ivan Varko, Gijs Den Butter, Louis Cacciuttolo, Rob Cole, and Alvin Wang Graylin. All the speakers have said very interesting things, but the last one, our dear “Mister President” has made a little public reveal of the upcoming strategy of HTC that interests us all.
During our friendly fireside chat on the stage of the event, where we talked about the future of immersive realities and the Chinese technological ecosystem, I asked The Prez to comment on the present of HTC and to give us a sneak peek of the future. He has so confirmed the rumors of a new HTC headset coming in 2021. “We’re going to release a new device,” he said, but then couldn’t add more because the device has not been officially revealed yet.
This statement comes as no surprise, considering that rumors about a new HTC headset are becoming more frequent in the last months: at first, on GeekBench appeared a listing of a new Vive Focus standalone headset powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 chipset; then Road To VR spotted an FCC filing for a new Vive headset. And at the latest Vive event inside which HTC launched the XR Suite, Hugo Swart from Qualcomm teased new XR2 headsets coming next year… and it would be weird if Qualcomm went to an HTC event to announce some headsets made by the competitors. For these reasons, I’m pretty sure that if HTC is going to launch a device, it will be a standalone one. (But it is a speculation of mine, I have had no official confirmation on this, so take this with a grain of salt!)
We were all already suspecting a new product was coming, and I am happy to have had confirmation about it. I have been a big fan of the Vive Focus and its open ecosystem, and so I can’t wait to discover its successor, especially in a time when the Oculus Quest 2 is facing almost no competition in the standalone market.
I’m sure that HTC won’t be able to propose a price tag competitive with the $299 value of the Quest 2, but maybe it will be able to offer a premium headset for more money. This could be interesting for prosumers, and also for companies that need an enterprise headset for professional uses. HTC has always had strong expertise in B2B licensing of VR technologies, so it is most probable they will go for the same route with this new headset, which could so compete with the $800 price of Oculus For Business. We need an active market with many different alternatives, and we need companies to put some pressure on Facebook, which otherwise risks establishing a monopoly, so this comment about this new headset is more than welcome. I personally also hope for new devices from Pico, Samsung, and other vendors next year. As I said, Qualcomm teased many upcoming announcements for 2021, and I can’t wait to see what the future will reserve for us.
When I asked for some more info, Mister President, just told me that “It will be better than the headsets currently in the market” and that “you will like it”, but he didn’t specify if he intended that is better than all the current headsets on the market, or just the ones offered by HTC.
Regarding the release date, at my question that asked if the device is going to be released as a Christmas Gift, he clearly answered that no, it will be later, in 2021, but “soon, so you won’t have to wait too much for it”. I think this means Q1 2021, or at maximum Q2. I hope that in January we will have more news about it.
After I had these little pieces of info, he didn’t want to comment any more on the matter, and we started talking about other topics. I’m sorry to say that I have not other info I can share with you on this 🙁
So, we now know that in 2021 we’ll see a new HTC device. I am personally intrigued, and you? Are you interested in it? What would you like to see in it? And what other headsets you would like to see launched next year? Let me know in the comments!
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(Header Image by Simone Favarin)