HTC’s slow decline in the smartphone market is expected to continue even in 2022. The company has announced that it will switch from blockchain to metaverse in April, states DigiTimes.
Charles Huang, HTC’s Asia-Pacific region general manager, told reporters at MWC 2022 that the firm would debut a new high-end smartphone in early February with unannounced “metaverse” capabilities.
There’s very little information, including any specifications, release markets, or even what sort of AR or VR features the new gadget will have.
The story sounds a lot like HTC’s last major shift in relevance: the Exodus blockchain phones it has offered for the past few years.
The phones ran blockchain nodes and even mined paltry amounts of bitcoin, but — similar to many blockchain-based solutions before it — it was a solution looking for a problem that never really took off.
Consider for the sake of argument that a metaverse phone is more logical than a blockchain one, given that HTC has been a significant player in the virtual reality sector.
The debut of a nebulous “Viverse” at MWC 2022 was the main takeaway for HTC. The firm’s metaverse idea, which promises to combine VR, XR, 5G, blockchain technology, NFTs, and more into a new futuristic platform, was one of the company’s major announcements.
Given the advancement of projects like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Spaces or Microsoft Mesh, which aim to help connect conventional devices with VR and AR applications, it’s conceivable what a metaverse-integrated smartphone might be.
A high-end HTC “metaverse” phone, on the other hand, might be one that tightly integrates with company’s VR headsets to provide an integrated, cross-device experience that dramatically transforms how we think about using cellphones (and other devices) in virtual environments.
The metaverse phone, on the other hand, might be a subpar smartphone with a few half-baked VR applications preinstalled.
At this point, it’s worth noting that HTC’s Viverse site states that one will be able to interact with its metaverse concept “from any phone, tablet, PC, or VR headset,” as well as an image of a smartphone showing what appears to be the same.
Perhaps the metaverse phone that HTC is expected to release will be a game-changer for them, bringing HTC back into relevancy and putting it back at the forefront of the sector. But the firm’s recent track record doesn’t inspire much optimism.
It’s difficult to recall in 2022, but HTC used to make decent phones – Android and Windows Phone versions that were among the best hardware on the market.
The best 4G phones are the legendary HTC HD2, the HTC Evo 4G, the HTC One X, the ultra-sleek HTC One, or the jewel-toned HTC U11.
However, that was not the same firm as the HTC of today, before it sold a large portion of its smartphone talent to Google for $1.1 billion in 2017. Since then, Google’s Pixel phones have only gotten better and better, while HTC’s smartphone business has struggled.
Irrespective of his hardware chops, HTC like LG, Motorola, and many Android device manufacturers failed to achieve the long-term commercial feat. And it was defeated by Samsung’s Galaxy devices and Apple’s iPhones.