After Fooling in April, HTC to Release Metaverse Smartphone this Month

The new HTC device will launch on June 28 and is set to be the first metaverse (or to be precise, Vivaverse) phone.

In the past few months, there hardly has been a day where companies have not talked about or showed their interest in emerging technologies like metaverse, virtual reality, blockchain, and more. Recently, HTC has announced that they are all set to bring the first-ever Metaverse phone. HTC has been largely a missing name in the smartphone market as of late, with barely any new devices launching in regions like India where the phone maker once reigned supreme. The new HTC device will launch on June 28 and is set to be the first metaverse (or to be precise, Vivaverse) phone. This means it will likely leverage VR and AR (Augmented Reality) with deeper integration with the Viveverse, HTC's own flavor of the Metaverse concept. The company has been known for its developments in the VR (Virtual Reality) segment in recent years. The company is now bringing together its experience in VR and smartphones together in a new device that it will launch later this month.

HTC's Viveverse phone, which still doesn't have an official name, was first expected to launch in April this year, but supply chain issues reportedly forced the Taiwan-based company to push back its launch plans.

According to the first post, from the date of the announcement, there's not a lot of information out there. HTC announced its Viverse brand in March 2022 to mark its ambitions for the metaverse. To that end, the way to go forward for HTC is to launch a varied line of products based on the concepts of web3 and the metaverse itself.

A couple of years ago, HTC attempted something similar when they launched the HTC Exodus and HTC Exodus 1s. These were some of the first smartphones to support blockchain technology and were designed as a digital wallets that would carry Bitcoin and other forms of cryptocurrency.

But because Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies weren't nearly as popular back then as they are now, the niche focus of building a smartphone solely around crypto never really took off.

Now with the metaverse on the horizon, for better or worse, HTC wants to give its lofty smartphone ambitions another shot. HTC's metaverse phone was supposed to debut back in April, but COVID-19 outbreaks in Taiwan forced HTC to delay its reveal.

Not a lot is known about the specifications of the upcoming HTC Viverse, but what we do know is that the new smartphone will be powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 9000 or Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8-series chipset. It will also support HTC Vive AR and VR headsets.

The metaverse concept is already a big deal in the major Asia-Pacific markets. For example, The China Global Television Network reported a metaverse industry committee in China has added 17 corporate members, bringing the tally to 112 in total. The new additions are said to include Inly Media, Beijing Top new Info&Tech, and Beijing Quanshi World Online Network Information, among others.

In addition, the China Mobile Communications Association's Metaverse Industry Committee was launched in October 2021 to assess the national industrial policy and strategy for metaverse developments in mobile communications. Its members include China Mobile and China Unicom, according to the Global Times, so telcos are getting in on the act in China. Reuters cited figures by data technology service company Tianyancha, which showed more than 1,000 Chinese companies have filed applications for some 10,000 trademarks related to the metaverse. These include digital platform giants Alibaba and Tencent.