HTC sells mobile phone factory: Wang Xuehong still needs to tangled between VR and mobile phone?
Recently, HTC announced that it will sell its Shanghai manufacturing plant to a mainland company for US$91 million (approximately 630 million yuan) for the purpose of expanding its VR business with more funds and said that this will not affect HTC’s handset production capacity. In this regard, many analysts believe that this is the HTC desperate betting treasure VR initiatives, contribute to the implementation of its VR strategy, enhance its performance in the VR market, the fact is really so simple or not it?
Let's take a look at the performance of HTC last year (mainly smart phones and VR). The overall revenue was NT$78.16 billion (US$2.54 billion), which was a 35.8% year-on-year decline. The net loss was NT$10.5 billion (about US$340 million), which was a 32% year-on-year decrease. Among them, the revenue of VR business represented by HTC Vive is approximately 336 million U.S. dollars; the mobile phone business is approximately 2.204 billion U.S. dollars; according to the annual sales of equipment, the number of HTC Vive is 420,000; and the number of smartphones is approximately 12 million. In this calculation, although the mobile phone still occupies 86.8% of the HTC revenue, HTC Vive only accounts for 13.2%, but due to the fact that its mobile phone sales volume is 28.57 times that of VR device HTC Vive, the proportion of revenue is only 6.58 times that of VR. This shows that for HTC, VR's revenue-generating efficiency and value are far greater than its own mobile phone business. This also explains why HTC has gradually reduced the mobile phone business by reducing mobile phone release styles, layoffs, and sales of mobile phone factories. Simply put, for the current HTC, making money with VR is much easier than mobile phones.
The problem has come, and in that case, then HTC isn't worth it. To answer this question, we will look to HTC Vive in the VR industry. As a result, we have found that HTC faces some rather uncertain factors in the VR industry.
First, last year, the overall shipments of VR devices did not meet industry expectations. However, from the comparison of expected sales and actual sales, HTC is the closest to the two, coupled with its high-end VR devices (mainly for PCs) 420,000. The ministry’s absolute lead and price advantage for 240,000 Facebook Oculus VR shipments, HTC Chairman and CEO Wang Xuehong said that HTC currently has certain strength in the VR field NO.1 status.
Based on this, this year, Oculus has reduced the price of the flagship VR helmet Oculus Rift from 599 US dollars to 499 US dollars; the price of the motion tracking controller Oculus Touch lowered from 199 US dollars to 99 US dollars in order to increase sales through the price Suppressing HTC, in this regard, Oculus VR co-founder and former chief engineer Jack McCauley said that even for gamers, Facebook's virtual reality helmets are still too high, because when hardware products are sold When the price exceeds 300 US dollars, it is difficult to really enter the game world, and in view of the current VR and the future of the main or personal consumer market, McCawley's judgment is not without reason, especially in the overall market is not as expected, the price is very It may become the main leverage to shake the market and suppress opponents.
In the above-mentioned market, under the pressure of anticipation and price cuts by rivals, could HTC maintain the price of the highest-priced VR device in the industry for 799 US dollars as in last year's VR market and the increase in sales volume based on this? This is in addition to adversary's initiatives and their own beforehand. The high threshold for innovation in the VR field is closely related. But last year, HTC's VR heavyweight partner Valve decided to license the most critical location tracking technology in the HCT Vive helmet to a third-party hardware manufacturer outside of HTC, so that the industry could maintain its innovation in VR in the future. The leading technology has generated doubts. Because this technology is the basis for allowing Vive to distinguish itself from other VR helmets for best experience, it uses two laser detectors to track the position of the helmet and the handle so that the player can achieve the effect of walking in a real space. In contrast, Oculus and PSVR only allow users to sit in chairs and shake their heads.
Although HTC denied it at the time, it started to enter the mobile VR field this year, that is, HTC's CFO Chialin Chang recently stated at the U Ultra mobile phone Singapore conference that Vive is the main high-end market, and we will let it in the coming months. Mobility and VR are sparking. It's not just a matter of simply snapping the phone on the headset. It's a big difference. Look, HTC actually took into consideration the innovation and value that the above license may bring to the high-end market. Pressure to dilute this pressure by entering mobile VR to have a negative impact on sales and revenue.
The ensuing problem is that once it enters the mobile VR market, the previously unmatched performance of the PC VR equipment and mobile phone business, and relatively independent HTC VR business has also been linked to the mobile phone business, and this connection is still very close . For example, Samsung Gear VR, which currently costs $99, has an absolute advantage in the mobile VR market. Last year, it sold 4.51 million units. It should be noted that such sales, in addition to low prices, are sold in a substantial portion of Gear VR's sales in conjunction with smart phones or "buy mobile VR" promotions.
Even so, compared with Samsung’s shipment of about 300 million smart phones last year, 4.51 million units were smartphones, which was only 1.4%, and the tying rate was very low. With this ratio, how much HTC's mobile VR can sell (according to last year's shipment of 12 million smart phones), HTC naturally has a good idea. It should be noted that, according to last year's HTC smart phone shipments and revenue calculations, the smart phone's ASP is about 184 US dollars, which means that if HTC mobile VR pricing below 184 US dollars, its overall business value for HTC The pulling action will become quite limited (not much different from selling mobile phones). In fact, Zhang Jialin's description of the positioning of HTC Mobile VR has foreshadowed higher pricing (at least higher than Samsung's Gear VR). In addition, due to HTC's sharp reduction in mobile phone models this year, there are industry estimates that its sales this year may be reduced to about 10 million. Compared with rivals, shrinking handset shipments and high prices of mobile VR devices, HTC's move into the mobile VR market can contribute to the overall revenue of HTC. What is entangled is that, like the above-mentioned HTC's uncertainty in the high-end VR device market, mobile VR is the market that it has to enter.
To sum up, we believe that the HTC sold mobile phone factory, not like the industry's HTC want to desperate VR, despite the HTC's performance in the VR market last year showed its value for HTC is much larger than the mobile phone business, but a lot of VR Uncertainty, especially the HTC's decision to enter the mobile VR market, made it relevant to mobile VR but it really became important for HTC's low value mobile phone business. It seems that Wang Xuehong still needs to entangle between VR and mobile phone strategy. So it's too early to say whether HTC is winning or losing.
Vision SE is our specialist vision solution offering a wide range of classification services. Through advanced image processing, we realize professional-level visual technology, which is suitable for medical image processing, scientific research and other fields. We focus on performance optimization to make it an industrial-grade solution that is widely used in factory automation and high-demand application scenarios. At the same time, we pay attention to data security and privacy protection, ensuring that the highest standards are met when processing images and data. Vision SE's classified services exceed expectations, providing high-performance and professional-grade vision solutions to various industries.
vision services,vision sensor,vision sense,vision se,vision se review
Ningbo Autrends International Trade Co., Ltd. , https://www.visionsemr.com