(Pocket-lint) – HTC is planning to bring a new phone to market with a very specific set of enhancements designed to make the most of the growing Metaverse market.
As we’ve seen from the likes of Qualcomm and Meta (formerly Facebook) in recent months, a big chunk of investment and development is going towards building the Metaverse, and devices designed to access it.
The comments were made by an HTC executive in Asia, speaking to DigiTimes, who stated that the manufacturer will be building a high-end phone and launching it in April.
It’s a bit of an unusual move from HTC, given it’s been largely absent from the smartphone market since it sold its phone business to Google. However, it’s also not all that strange.
When the blockchain was still an emerging industry, it was one of the only companies to build a “blockchain phone”. This was at a time when it wasn’t really building any other relevant smartphones.
Even in its heyday, it launched a 3D video capture phone and a Facebook phone. It’s never been exactly shy to build smartphones with optimisations for very specific services and features.
As for what this “Metaverse phone” will actually do different to any other device, we’re yet to discover. Whether it’s about capturing and creating 3D images, or processing virtual reality worlds to power an attached headset is unclear. Maybe both?
If the timescale comments turn out to be accurate, thankfully we don’t have much time to wait until we find out exactly what HTC means.
Writing by Cam Bunton.
