HTC has now confirmed it will be opening up pre-orders for Vive on February 29. The Vive is a HTC-Valve partnership, announced last spring, is a virtual reality experience.
According to CEO Cher Wang, the VR headset is slated to ship in April 2016. Wang says the focus has shifted from phones and has dubbed the VR, “more important”. There are also indications that the company will take a step back from building typical smartphones entirely.
Wang says the company feels that “we should apply our best design to different type of sectors. Yes, smartphones are important, but to create a natural extension to other connected devices like wearables and virtual reality is more important”. She says HTC has a “vision of smartphones with different types of form factors, it won’t always look like this”.
Wang says that she believes that with “virtual reality, technology becomes limitless. You can inhabit a different world with a head mount. Think how it could change surgery, education, science, even shopping,” she added. BM
Source: HTC, Tech Crunch