HTC Vive Wang Congqing: The VR company that receives millions of dollars is coming soon

The spin-off of the Vive business to establish a wholly owned subsidiary is a sensible decision made by HTC, which has prevented the emerging business from being dragged down by the mobile phone business.

HTC Vive President of China Wang Congqing

Splitting gave HTC the desired effect. On October 27th, HTC announced its third-quarter financial report, which resulted in a total revenue of NT$22.23 billion, an increase of 3.75% compared with NT$21.4 billion in the same period of last year. This financial report shows that on the one hand, it is difficult to recover the smart phone business that is deteriorating. On the other hand, HTC Vive sales exceeded expectations in the first three quarters.

It is hard to deny that HTC is a technologically forward-looking company. Whether it is the smartphone of the year or the current VR, HTC has seized the opportunity in the early stage of the industry.

In the eyes of Wang Congqing, president of HTC Vive China, HTC's VR business will not repeat the mistakes of the mobile phone business. “The current layout strategy of HTC Vive is completely different from the previous mobile phone business. From the layout of content ecology to participation in the VR alliance, we want to understand the current status of the industry and actively think about ways to solve these problems,” he said.

In addition, HTC invested $100 million to launch a ViveX accelerator program, mainly to support the global VR startup team to provide rich content for HTC Vive. In April of this year, HTC also led the launch of the Asia Pacific Virtual Reality Alliance (APVRA).

Subsequently, Wang Congqing also became Vice Chairman of the China Virtual Reality Industry Alliance (IVRA). This seat was voted by 180 large and small VR companies worldwide. Even Wang Congqing had to admit that this identity can help HTC Vive to win more. The right to speak.

All of the above shows that HTC wants to reproduce its past ambitions in the VR industry.

On November 3, Wang Congqing appeared at the "Tmall Double 11 Global Wise Brain Ecology Summit". He revealed in an exclusive interview with reporters that HTC will release a new product on the double 11th day. On the same day, in Wang Congqing’s WeChat circle of friends, a logo with Lynx and HTC Vive logos and mobile VR helmets appeared, suggesting that HTC Vive’s mobile VR devices will be on display soon.

In the conversation, Wang Congqing explained to reporters the thinking of HTC Vive on content ecology and channel strategy.

Reporter: Do you have a clear sales target for this year's first double 11 on the T-City?

Wang Congqing: The sales volume of our products in the Tmall flagship store has been continuously increasing. I think the cooperation with Tmall so far is very satisfactory. I always think that Tmall is a good sales channel and a good partner.

Moreover, Shuang 11 is a very important promotional day in the world, so we very much hope that we can create some sales records on that day, and we will also cooperate more closely with Tmall that day.

Reporter: This is the first time that HTC Vive has participated in the Double 11. Has this prepared some interesting marketing games?

Wang Congqing: On the day of Double 11, we will release some new things. I can't disclose too much for the time being, but the big problem that plagued the industry, HTC Vive has been solved through this product.

Reporter: The market share of HTC mobile phones is declining, including revenue from mobile phone business. On the contrary, Vive's business is growing, so how does HTC's management attitude toward your business?

Wang Congqing: I think mobile phones and Vive are two very important businesses of the company. Of course, HTC has a wearable device business. These are the main business of the company.

In the first few months, we have announced that Vive has become a wholly-owned subsidiary, so the two companies operate independently and in parallel. From this point of view, the importance of Vive is already obvious, and Vive's growth rate far exceeds other businesses.

Reporter: HTC is still at the leading position like the current HTC Vive in the initial stage of the development of smart phones. But from a series of recent signs, the market share of HTC handsets has shrunk. Do you worry that your VR product will also be surpassed by rising stars?

Wang Congqing: In every new field, we have to be forward-looking. However, Vive's business logic is very different from our mobile phone business. Before HTC's mobile phone was developed from the device perspective to develop new products, and you can see that a series of ecological layouts of HTC on the non-hardware side recently, we hope By creating a VR platform, or even an ecosystem, HTC keeps its voice in the VR field.

Reporter: In the past few years, many traditional mobile phone manufacturers, including HTC, Samsung, etc., are slowly transitioning to VR. What do you think are the reasons for this collective transformation?

Wang Congqing: I think the trend of VR is not just happening in mobile phone manufacturers. There should be many industries that see the future of VR. The development of VR technology has been a five or six decades history, and it only took off in the last two or three years.

Because a lot of technical conditions have gradually matured, especially the current processor performance, it can already allow consumers to experience an immersive experience. It also enables VR products to enter home consumption and can quickly create VR content. All of these allow everyone to really understand VR. The ability and influence are also the reasons why so many companies have recently started to enter the VR market.

Although our products are only available this year, HTC Vive started R&D work 5-6 years ago. I think that HTC has always been a company with innovative genes. Google's just-released VR phone, Pixel, is manufactured by HTC OEM.

So you can see that some of the recent innovations in VR are that we are leading the industry and other companies are following us, including recently that Oculus has started to publicize their handles. The first day the device was launched from HTC Vive. Already equipped, and they also claimed to do space positioning, this technology is the first version of the HTC Vive there.

Reporter: Products from major technology companies such as Google, Oculus, and Samsung are all on the market this year. The industry is highly competitive, but you just mentioned that HTC Vive's growth rate is very fast. From your personal point of view, what are the driving factors for the rapid growth of this product?

Wang Congqing: The reason for the rapid growth of HTC Vive is that products are recognized by the market. I think consumers like to experience stable and content-rich products. This is the core competitiveness of HTC Vive.

Many people will question whether "Sony's Playstation VR is coming out and your business will be reduced?" But according to our current observations, after the release of Sony's products, our products (sales) grew faster.

Reporter: In the VR ecology, what are the layouts of HTC? Why do these layouts?

Wang Congqing: We built a content layout around a display device, a mobile VR device, and an offline experience store. Developers on the HTC Vive can benefit from it.

First, we built the application store HTC VivePort. In October, we also launched VivePort M in China. This is a VR mobile platform for Android phones, including mobile VR applications, panoramic video and other content. In addition, Viveport Arcade is a content distribution system developed for Vive shops and amusement parks. Currently, 120-130 developers are stationed.

In addition, we also have an accelerator, ViveX, to help prospective small startup companies and provide them with various tools and professional project guidance. The goal is to support VR developers to create more VR applications and jointly build and improve the Vive ecosystem. system.

In addition, we and the other 42 world's largest venture capital companies form an alliance VVRCA (Virtual Reality Venture Capital Alliance), the total investment reserves of these companies more than 12 billion US dollars.

In September, we cooperated with the government in the IVRA (Virtual Reality Industry Alliance), which brought together 180 top VR industry companies including Unity3D, NVIDIA and Samsung Semiconductor.

Obviously, HTC Vive's current layout strategy is completely different from the previous mobile phone business. The layout of content ecology, participation in VR alliance, we want to know the status of the industry, and actively think about what methods to solve these problems.

Reporter: Under the ecology of HTC Vive, what is the profit of content developers?

Wang Congqing: There are now about 5 game developers with monthly income of more than one million US dollars. Of course, this figure is still relatively small compared to ordinary internet or mobile game companies.

However, we expect that companies with weekly revenues of more than one million US dollars will soon be born. In the next two or three years, I think there will be content companies with average daily income exceeding one million yuan.

Reporter: In my opinion, HTC's content ecology strategy is like Apple's launch of the iPhone, opening the app store to all developers, allowing developers to participate in content development, and they can also benefit from it.

Wang Congqing: Actually not exactly the same, Apple's ecosystem is a relatively closed ecosystem, and HTC Vive is relatively open, we can have so many venture capital companies, together with the industry's competitors, in order to work in the same direction.

Reporter: Before you became the vice chairman of the IVRA (Virtual Reality Industry Alliance), what vendors and HTC are competing for this position, why did you end up as a vice chairman?

Wang Congqing: At that time, there were indeed many companies competing for this position. The specific company was not convenient to disclose, but after 180 manufacturers voted, HTC was accepted by most companies in the industry, so I became the vice chairman of this alliance.

Reporter: What is the significance of HTC Vive as the Vice President of the Alliance?

Wang Congqing: This has given HTC Vive more say in the industry.

Reporter: Recently, HTC Vive launched the Viveland Virtual Amusement Park in Sanchuang Park in Taipei. What are your plans for offline channels?

Wang Congqing: In addition to Taipei, we also set up a VR club in Shenzhen. On the one hand, we hope to make some benchmarks for the market. We have found that there may be thousands of VR experience stores in the entire market, but there are not many high-quality offline stores.

On the other hand, giving users a good trial experience, they will have a good recognition of your brand and product, so the layout of the experience shop can also help us to seize market share.

Viveland is a relatively high-quality experience shop. Next, we also plan to set up virtual reality parks in more places to educate the consumer market.

HTC Vive now also cooperates with Suning, Gome and other companies to enter their offline stores. I expect that the number of HTC Vive's experience stores will reach 10,000 by the middle of next year. In addition to entering the appliance store, we are more important layout goals are Internet cafes and KTV.

Reporter: One problem with the experience store is its low level of efficiency. HTC Vive is a company that plans to open 10,000 stores. What is the method to improve the efficiency of the experience store?

Wang Congqing: Recently, we set up a department that specializes in training, educating, and managing offline experience stores to establish standards for experiencing content, service attitudes, and equipment hygiene.

Reporter: What is the progress of the next generation of product development?

Wang Congqing: I can't reveal too much. HTC Vive will be released when the new product is perfect.

Reporter: At the end of the day, there are a lot of domestic mobile phone manufacturers who have also invested in research and development of VR devices. As the person in charge of HTC Vive, what do you want to say about them?

Wang Congqing: The VR industry is just starting. HTC Vive is very pleased to see more and more manufacturers start developing VR products, because the market has always required different levels of products to meet the needs of different consumers.