We have been following HTC for four or five years. Speaking of HTC, IT is an IT company in Taiwan Province Province, China. Once the world's largest smartphone OEM, it now focuses on VR products.
HTC used to be beautiful. Their earliest product was to produce a handheld electronic device called iPAQ for Compaq OEM, which is one of the earliest handheld electronic devices in the world. Although the product was beautiful for a while, the subsequent sales were weak.
Later, HTC entered the Android phone and jointly launched GooglePhone with Google. However, when it came to Google, HTC changed from a co-branded partner to a foundry.
Starting from 20 17, HTC decided to transform and made many arrangements in the virtual reality industry:
The first is the research and development of hardware capabilities, producing its own brand of VR headsets, and also launching a product called Vive tracker on CES 20 17. This tracker is installed on the glove, which can completely describe the trajectory of your movement and realize the tracking of the movement position of the object.
Then, in terms of software layout, HTC has formed in-depth cooperation with Valve, a company that operates the Steam game platform, and also launched its own VR application store.
At the beginning, HTC fell on smart phones, focused its strategy on VR and made a good industrial layout. After several years of silence, I am ready to launch new products this year, which deserves everyone's attention.
From the popularity of Facebook's Oculus Quest 2 at the beginning of this year, to the launch of Microsoft's mixed reality platform Mesh in March this year, and then to the signing of an ar order worth 210.90 billion US dollars between Microsoft and the US Army on March 3/0/day, the VR/AR industry has returned to the forefront.
HTC is also one of the companies that laid out virtual reality earlier. Seeing that other technology companies have made substantial industrialization moves, HTC can't panic, and it is reasonable to launch new products.
It is an inevitable choice in the era of "trend investment" to launch new products when technology breaks out, so it is only a matter of time before we judge that another company with an earlier layout, Apple, will launch new equipment.
Nowadays, in this trend investment era, a large amount of funds are injected into science and technology projects, and the process of industrialization of science and technology is obviously accelerated.
The thinking in the era of "trend investment" and "value investment" is very different. The way of value investment is to analyze the financial situation of the enterprise and observe whether the income of the enterprise grows linearly every quarter or every year, while the core of trend investment is to grasp the explosion point, concept and imagination space.
We will use this set of ideas to look at the VR/AR industry in the trend investment era.
First, catch the explosion point.
Entering 202 1 year, it can be said that the tipping point of VR/AR is unchanged. Facebook's Oculus Quest 2 costs only $299, and there is no need to connect to the host. The high refresh rate and resolution solved the problem of dizziness, and the sales volume far exceeded expectations. This is a simple and easy-to-use VR headset that can be commercialized on a large scale. Is the first "tipping point".
Then, Microsoft released the mixed reality platform Mesh for developers. You can match the scene in * * * in the form of virtual image or even holographic projection, which is another "tipping point".
We also saw the explosion point in the application. In 2020, "Night of the Fortress" and singer Travis Scott held an immersive concert in the game, and the atmosphere was bursting, with ratings reaching tens of millions.
In addition, the VR game "Half Life" developed by Valve quickly exploded, with more than 2 million players and more than 40,000 online users, which is a benchmark in the VR game industry.
Second, grasp the concept.
With a series of "explosive points", what is the "concept" that VR/AR industry should grasp? A good concept can describe a convincing future, make people believe in the future and incite the whole industry to realize this future.
This concept is the "next generation Internet". The Internet, which is widely used now, is a two-dimensional world.
Through VR/AR technology, our Internet will be upgraded to a three-dimensional world, which is not only visible, audible and tangible, but also a digital world closer to the real world.
In the metauniverse created by virtual reality, we can break the physical rules and travel through time and space. Because it is three-dimensional immersive, the experience will be closer to the real world.
Therefore, VR/AR will upgrade the current Internet to "experience the next generation Internet closer to reality".
With this "concept", we can analyze who is most likely to be the next successful enterprise. I analyzed the possibility of Facebook's success in the concept of "next generation internet" at the special training camp for science and technology.
Finally, grasp the imagination space.
With the explosion point and concept, imagination space is the key to judge whether an enterprise will succeed in the future.
Although Tesla's valuation is very high, I judge that there may be short-term fluctuations in the stock price in the future, but it will never be halved because Tesla has a clear and quantifiable market space. Enterprises shouting "IOT AIoT" can't get hot because the imagination space is vague.
Excuse me: Do I need to talk to the refrigerator washing machine at home? What are they talking about? Who will AIoT replace? How big is the market? No one can give a convincing answer.
And VR/AR has a clear and broad imagination.
Take the "human-computer interaction interface" as an example, and its imagination space is very clear:
Today's "human-computer interaction interface" has several steps: when you encounter an unheard-of restaurant name, you take out your mobile phone as the first interface, then click on the webpage, enter the website address, which is the second interface, and then search for keyword information.
In the future scene of human-computer interaction, when you walk to a street, the wristband will capture the action signal transmitted from the brain nerve to your hand, and connect it directly to the head display, showing the street name, the names of surrounding buildings, the location and types of nearby restaurants, without opening the phone to input.
The future human-computer interaction is to superimpose Internet information on the real world to form a closed loop.
Therefore, the value of this human-computer interaction interface will exceed the current value of Google. If Facebook CEO Zuckerberg claims that AR headsets and wristbands can be successfully applied to realize human-computer interaction, then its valuation can be superimposed on Google's valuation. In this way, the imagination of VR/AR is at least bigger than that of Google today.
Another imaginative place is the social platform. Today's socialization is through friends circle and communication app, and the VR social platform is to upgrade the current flat social platform into a three-dimensional virtual world.
Nowadays, a large number of VR platforms have emerged, such as Wave, which holds virtual concerts, Hoppin, which provides social interaction imitating real scenes, Rec Room, where players create their own social platforms for games, and so on. In this way, the imagination of VR/AR will be bigger than that of Google plus Facebook today.
However, the future social platform will be characterized by winner-take-all rather than letting a hundred flowers blossom. I judge that the next big MAC enterprise will be born in it.