Lives HTC X: $ 100 million for ecosystem growth VR

HTC Vive is part of a more complex project to develop the ecosystem of products, software and companies operating the field of Virtual Reality. To achieve this, the Taiwanese manufacturer has recently activated Lives X program, which provides for an investment fund of $ 100 million created to provide start-up appropriate skills, special access to VR technology, financial investment, tutoring and support for functional activities to product / service delivery.

The program gets underway from three cities: Beijing, Taipei and San Francisco, and then spread in the future to other major locations worldwide. In Beijing, in May, HTC will offer a handful of startups in Asia selected the option to access the X Lives program with the ultimate goal to provide new business opportunities related to the Lives platform aiming, simultaneously, to consolidate this' last. The selected companies will receive a cash investment by participating in the fund.

The Lives X program that will kick off in Beijing, like other activated in different locations, is aimed at "speeding up the entry and growth of companies with proven success in the field of Virtual Reality." A very broad target audience includes companies that create content, tools, applications, and accessories to enrich the experience and the VR ecosystem. President and CEO of HTC, Cher Wang, commented as follows the news to the program's Lives X:

We are very enthusiastic about the program and to bring the brightest and most creative minds to join Lives X. Virtual reality is changing the world, but to do so effectively, it needs a robust ecosystem to expand into the mass market. We look forward to allow the world's best talent to create compelling content and engaging with HTC lives to help shape the future of this sector.

A forward-looking position to HTC pointing not only to produce and market the hardware with the viewer lives, but also to lay the foundations on which to build a robust ecosystem of companies that will carry out in practice the content for users Lives. The program lives X, therefore, does not address the consumer market, but also the latter it will indirectly benefit: new hardware, however revolutionary, is but little without the right software to exploit it. Investing in start-ups operating in the VR industry means putting a serious claim on software development.