SHANGHAI: HTC Corp will step up popularising the use of virtual reality (VR) technology in both the consumer market and the enterprise market, as part of its broader push to better tap into the metaverse, a senior executive says.
As a hot tech buzzword, metaverse refers to a shared virtual environment or digital space created by technologies, including VR and augmented reality (AR).
Charles Huang, corporate vice-president of HTC (pic), said there is a surging demand for VR devices in a wide range of segments, such as remote conferencing, training, education, healthcare, design and exhibition, with the Covid-19 pandemic bolstering the application of VR equipment.
According to Huang, HTC is banking on the business-to-business segment and attaches great importance to cooperation with industry partners to develop new applications.
“Metaverse is not a slogan or a very distant future,” Huang said, adding that HTC is working hard to strengthen technological exchanges and information sharing in the metaverse and striving to build an interconnected, mutually beneficial and compatible metaverse ecosystem.
HTC has unveiled an open metaverse platform called Viverse, which provides seamless experiences that are reachable on any device, anywhere and is enabled by VR, AR, high-speed connectivity, artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies.
Data from International Data Corp showed that the investment scale of the global AR and VR market was close to US$14.67bil (RM64.8bil) in 2021 and is expected to increase to US$74.73bil (RM330bil) by 2026, with a compound annual growth rate of 38.5%.
China’s AR and VR market reached about US$2.13bil (RM9.4bil) in 2021 and will increase to US$13.08bil (RM57.8bil) by 2026, making it the second-largest market in the world.
Pedro Palandrani, a technology analyst at research company Global X ETFs, said early versions of metaverse now exist, offering investors a glimpse of its enormous potential. However, a successful metaverse is expected to feature a decentralised open platform accessed by VR headsets and powered by blockchain technology.
“A truly immersive metaverse experience, for instance, engages all the senses — sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. Today, VR mostly involves sound and images,” Palandrani said. — China Daily/ANN
