HTC is making a big push to get virtual reality introduced in China. The company has already signed a collaboration with the Chinese online marketplace company Alibaba to make it happen. With this collaboration, HTC could use the cloud computing services of Alibaba for its promising virtual reality unit. The smartphone manufacturing company is currently struggling and has been doing all their efforts to solve it by making their move towards the world of virtual reality. The firm is now exploring new options highlighting their new HTC Vive headset as its principal smartphone business continues to go downward.
According to Yibada, the Vive headset can transform a room into a 3D space using its sensors. This enables users to navigate a virtual reality environment. The new HTC unit includes motion tracked handheld controllers. On the other news, HTC plans to build up the awareness and increase the demand for virtual reality devices with this new partnership. In April, the Taiwanese company has capitalized $100 million for startup units and released 10,000 demo version of their HTC Vive in all stores across China.
According to Fortune, Ge Jin, the cloud business architect director of Alibaba, said that cloud computing continues to break boundaries unexpectedly and rapidly quicken the innovation rate. He also adds that with their collaboration with HTC, it will benefit both companies by bringing more value and influence to both VR and cloud.
HTC's freshly released VR app store will be available on Alibaba Cloud as part of the partnership deal. Customers will be able to download the app store through Cloud. The newly formed alliance makes sense for the Taiwanese company as they are trying to make their Vive headset known. However, a large amount of bandwidth is required in order for the virtual reality and 360-degree videos to stream without hitches. It will need a flexible and powerful data center to be able to support that large bandwidth. For Alibaba, they have been the dominant provider of cloud services in China where its other competitors like Microsoft and Amazon are unable to do the same. The two foreign companies have not been able to go past the country's cyber security laws.
