HTC is spinning off Vive into a separate company
HTC has seen its share of ups and downs and CEO shuffles in the past few years. Now, with its virtual reality division looking strong on the back of the HTC Vive release, the Taiwanese company may be prepping to spin off that lucrative business into its own wholly-owned subsidiary called “HTC Vive Tech Corporation.”
Earlier reports indicated the move was possible, but HTC confirmed the reorganization to The Verge today. The company’s brief, one-sentence statement:
HTC can confirm that it has established a wholly-owned subsidiary, HTC Vive Tech Corporation, as a vehicle for developing strategic alliances to help build the global VR ecosystem.
While the shuffle doesn’t change much in the near term — and Vive is still completely under HTC’s larger umbrella — the shift does give the Vive group some extra protection should the rest of the company start to go belly-up.
During (July 04, 2016)’s Mobile World Congress in Shanghai, HTC and Vive made a few other other VR-related announcements. Namely, Vive is launching the VR Venture Capital Alliance “to foster long-term growth in the VR industry” through strategic investments. The VRVCA claims to have $10 billion in deployable funds, ready to invest in the next big VR thing.
Update: We have spoken to HTC’s China Regional President of VR, Alvin Wang Graylin, who clarified that while the new fully-owned subsidiary is already running all of HTC’s VR business, it hasn’t spun off the business, nor will it comment on such possibility in the future. We have since updated this article to reflect this. The existence of HTC Vive Tech officially came to light as early as May this year, according to Mobile World Live.
Richard Lai contributed to this article.
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