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HTC’s first Vive standalone VR headsetwill be aimed at the Chinese market, the company has announced, and will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 mobile chipset.
The news comes out of ChinaJoy 2017, and follows HTC’s previous announcement in May that it would be developing a standalone headset for Google Daydream. The new headset announced at ChinaJoy is merely the Chinese equivalent of the company’s planned Daydream headset.
"This device will be the same class of standalone VR solution and is targeted for the China market. We’ll release more details at our future events," an HTC spokesperson told MCV.
Developers interested in the platform should head to HTC’s Viveport hub for more information. Viveport will also serve as the headset’s official content platform.
HTC hopes it will become the best-in-class premium device for the Chinese market, but the idea is to make the headset as accessible as possible. As previously announced, the headset won’t require a phone or PC in order to work, and will instead be powered by Qualcomm’s mobile-based Snapdragon 835 chipset.
This chipset already has built-in VR support, and the fact it’s the same processor found inside many current top-end smartphone means it should help speed up development times, helping HTC to deliver a swathe of top-quality content as soon as possible.
Alvin W. Graylin, HTC’s China regional president of Vive said:"China is the leading mobile market in the world today, and has the momentum to lead the global VR market as well.
"Partnering with Qualcomm to deliver an easy to use and more affordable Vive VR system will enable us to make premium standalone VR widely accessible to the masses in China.”
Hugo Swart, senior director of product management at Qualcomm added:Snapdragon 835 is designed to deliver superior VR experiences without the need for wires or a separate PC. We are thrilled to work with HTC’s Vive team as they utilize our rich feature set to create exciting, new VR experiences in the first truly mobile VR headset of the Vive ecosystem.”
As for whether the headset will be released outside of China, an HTC spokesperson told MCV that "Vive is working with Google to deliver the best-in-class standalone VR solution to the western markets, and today, we are jointly announcing with Qualcomm to bring a premium standalone VR experience to the China market."
