HTC Defends VR, Says It's Not Dying

HTC has fired back against claims that the future of virtual reality is in jeopardy by sharing some insight into sales figures and the brief history of the new technology.

The makers of the VR headset called the HTC Vive, HTC shared a post on the site's blog in response to analysts' claims and a report from Digital Trends that said the VR industry was hurting due to declining sales. HTC said that it's not paying much attention to these alarms while adding that "news of the so-called death of VR comes once a year and is greatly exaggerated" before breaking down why this is the case. The VR creators said that forecasts about the industry can contain valuable info at times, but after saying that it'd be helpful to look at how these analysts came to their conclusions that paint a grim picture for VR, HTC shared four key points to keep in mind when looking at analyst forecasts.

1. The start of "consumer VR" was driven primarily by mobile phone viewers like GearVR and Google Cardboard. As these have become less enticing (i.e. the VR experience isn't living up to consumer expectations), those units that were largely used as promotional devices for phone launches have dropped off.
2. Premium VR has solidified and ramped up over time, yet the major players have not released sales figures to substantiate the market momentum (read on for a key figure we are releasing today).
3. The overall VR experience continues to improve with the enhanced resolution and comfort of the HTC VIVE Pro, more titles, more accessories, and soon, less cables. Yet, the analysts aren't predicting a watershed moment based on these improvements.
4. Businesses are ramping up VR investment in a big way, especially in the location-based entertainment and training industries. These numbers don't hit consumer forecasts, and therefore, are not included in the reports.

Moving past the four points, HTC addressed the Digital Trends article. The report, headlined "VR is in a tailspin, and the sales numbers prove it," cited Amazon sales data to say that "consumers are done with VR." Included in the article were sales rankings for different VR devices, HTC Vive included, and said that the sales rank for HTC had "plummeted." HTC responded to this by saying that the figures aren't the whole story and that there's a reason behind the decline.

"VIVE has paced at its highest sales velocity of all time, for weeks on end, and we sold out. For a consumer electronic product in its third calendar year, this continued trajectory is nearly unheard of. Don't worry, though: we are ramping up production of the original VIVE and units will continue to roll out to online and retail over the coming weeks."

Digital Trends published a response to HTC's rebuttal which can be seen here.