Connect with us

Published

on

Cher Wang, chairperson, co-founder and CEO of HTC, speaks at a keynote on the second day of the Mobile World Congress 2023.

Joan Cros | Nurphoto | Nurphoto via Getty Images

BARCELONA — The boss of consumer electronics firm HTC thinks Apple is going to launch its own mixed reality headset, but she’s not worried about the competition.

Speaking with CNBC at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, HTC CEO and co-founder Cher Wang said the Cupertino tech giant was likely to launch a mixed reality, or XR, product “very soon” — potentially as soon as this year. XR refers to technologies that blend the physical and digital worlds.

“I think the earliest [release date] may be middle or later this year,” Wang said.

The company will likely prioritize such a device over augmented reality glasses, she added.

Apple did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.

It has reportedly indefinitely paused plans to launch AR glasses by 2025. The company has long been rumored to be working on its own virtual and augmented reality experiences. In January, Bloomberg reported that it is gearing up to release a mixed reality headset in the spring.

Apple often holds off on getting into a particular product trend or feature until long after other firms. For instance, the iPhone didn’t get a camera with two lenses until 2017, years after HTC introduced a dual camera with its HTC One M8 handset in 2014.

“Apple is always more cautious. I think the market is now big enough [that] they probably will enter,” Wang said.

But when Apple does eventually make its way into a new product category, it tends to “redefine the way that everyone thinks about an opportunity,” according to Leo Gebbie, principal analyst for connected devices at CCS Insight.

Neil Shah, research vice president of Counterpoint Research, told CNBC: “XR is the newest form of how we can interact differently with the world and can change the paradigm of personal computing.”

“Apple and the entire industry realizes the potential and hence want to enter and eventually lead this segment,” he added.

XR competition is fierce

Mobile phone inventor: Modern phones not optimal for speaking

That will mean more competition for HTC. In the second quarter of 2022, the company shipped over 100,000 XR devices, according to data from Counterpoint Research, up by 158% from 40,000 shipments in the same period a year prior. But its market share remains relatively small.

If anything, Wang thinks that moves from Apple, Meta, Samsung and others in the space will boost the overall adoption of mixed reality devices, which she sees as a boon to HTC’s business.

“It’s really proven that our direction is correct,” she said. “Competition is always good.”

Once a major player in the smartphone market, HTC has staked its future on the merging of virtual and physical worlds. In January, the company launched its Vive XR Elite device, a lightweight headset focused on gaming, fitness and productivity, at a $1,099 price point.

HTC sold a chunk of its smartphone business to Google in 2018 for $1.1 billion.

Betting on the ‘metaverse’

The bet long term is that these devices will be how we interact with a mass-scale virtual world known as the “metaverse.” HTC has its own so-called metaverse, named HTC Viverse, and the company talked up its ambitions in this area at the show this week.

“The metaverse is kind of growing in a state where so many social media companies and walled garden companies are trying to build it out themselves,” Shen Ye, HTC’s global head of product, told CNBC. “Our goal is to make sure it’s as open and interconnected as possible.”

Buzz around the metaverse has died down lately, as the initial hype surrounding Meta’s involvement has been wearing off. Worldwide shipments of VR headsets as well as augmented reality devices sales sank over 12% last year, according to IDC data.

Companies have instead steered toward artificial intelligence, the new in-vogue tech topic that has been catapulted to the top of industry insiders’ favorite trends by ChatGPT, a popular AI chatbot. At MWC, South Korean telecoms firm SKTelecom had a big sign that read “AI METAVERSE.”

Donning one of HTC’s XR devices, users can immerse themselves in virtual spaces or interact with 3D objects in the physical space surrounding them.

In one experience shown off at MWC, people were invited to try out their boxing skills. A grid of nine black circles appears, and you were scored on how quickly you could punch them as they lit up red one after the other in a random order.

Beyond the consumer space, HTC sees its technology offering applications in more commercial and industrial settings. The company is working with the United States Air Force and police departments to carry out virtual training experiences, Wang said.

WATCH: ChatGPT a ‘milestone’ for Qualcomm as it showcases A.I. smartphone capability, CEO says

ChatGPT a 'milestone' for Qualcomm as it showcases A.I. smartphone capability, CEO says

Continue Reading

Technology

Trump’s Nvidia and Intel meddling is a ‘scattershot method of crony capitalism’: Walter Isaacson

Published

on

By

Trump's Nvidia and Intel meddling is a 'scattershot method of crony capitalism': Walter Isaacson

U.S. government's push for Intel stake is a scattershot method of crony capitalism: Walter Isaacson

President Donald Trump‘s dealings with Intel and Nvidia amount to a “scattershot method of crony capitalism,” Walter Isaacson said Thursday.

“That state capitalism often evolves into crony capitalism, where you have favored companies and industries that pay tribute to the leader, and that is a recipe for not only disaster, but just sort of a corrupt sense of messiness,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

The Tulane University professor, widely known for his recent Elon Musk biography, argued that this method won’t succeed in reviving American manufacturing.

Isaacson’s comments come as the Trump administration wades further into influencing the way companies operate in the U.S.

The White House is pushing for a stake in embattled chipmaker Intel after Trump called CEO Lip-Bu Tan “highly CONFLICTED” and said he should resign.

Earlier this month, both Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices agreed to pay 15% of their China revenues to the U.S. government for export licenses to sell certain chips there.

Isaacson said he’s always been “dubious” of public-private partnerships. He highlighted Trump’s push for Coca-Cola to use cane sugar in its namesake soda as another example of “crony capitalism.”

Read more CNBC tech news

Continue Reading

Technology

Google’s Pixel 10 launch wasn’t about the phones but the strategic AI play

Published

on

By

Google’s Pixel 10 launch wasn't about the phones but the strategic AI play

A person holds Google Pixel 10 Pro mobile phones during the ‘Made by Google’ event, organized to introduce the latest additions to Google’s Pixel portfolio of devices, in Brooklyn, New York, U.S., August 20, 2025.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

While Google made a big splash with its Pixel 10 series of smartphones, it was the software features that were strategically important for the tech giant’s bid to compete with players like OpenAI and Perplexity in consumer AI.

As it introduced its latest devices on Wednesday, Alphabet-owned Google showed off a slew of artificial intelligence features that are powered by the firm’s Gemini AI models. “Magic Cue,” for example, can scour various apps for information and deliver it to users when required. “Camera Coach” can give users tips on how to adjust framing and other aspects of a picture for the perfect shot. Live translation for phone calls is also available.

All of this gives a glimpse into the so-called “agentic AI” future that tech giants are hoping to reach, where super-smart AI assistants can carry out complex tasks.

It is a pivotal time for Google to come up with answers, as fears mount that users and revenue from its core search product could be eroded as more people turn to rivals like Perplexity and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Before Google lies a unique opportunity — the company develops Android, the operating system that is installed across more than three billion devices globally, many of which are smartphones.

How Android could be Google's best shot to take on OpenAI's ChatGPT

“The company is leapfrogging rivals like OpenAI and DeepSeek by leveraging its access to billions of Android users, enabling a more effective distribution, integration, and a wider range of use cases for Gemini at scale,” Neil Shah, partner at Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.

Ben Wood,  chief analyst at CCS Insight, said the smartphone is the “most pervasive consumer device on the planet” and that Google now has an “opportunity to get people hooked on Gemini.”

Google doesn’t need to sell a high volume of Pixel phones to find AI success with consumers. In fact, Pixel had just a 0.3% share of the global smartphone market in the first half of the year, compared to 23% for Samsung and 11.8% for Apple, according to the International Data Corporation.

But Google’s aim with its smartphones is to show off the best that Android has to offer in terms of software and AI. At that point, Android licensers, which include the likes of Samsung and Xiaomi, may adopt some of those features on their new handsets.

This cycle would in turn spread Google’s Gemini and AI tools to more users.

“This massive user base creates a “flywheel effect” of adoption, usage, and feedback, further solidifying Gemini’s position as a master agent on the most widely used device on the planet—the smartphone,” Shah said.

The timing is also advantageous because of struggles at rival Apple. The Cupertino giant’s lack of AI strategy has concerned investors, with the iPhone showing very few features compared to Google’s offerings.

“Google has their tails up because Apple has dropped the ball. When Apple gets AI right it will be a fantastic experience. But right now, Google and all Android licensees have a window of opportunity,” Wood said.

Yet while there is now a land grab for users between major AI players, questions still linger over how Google will eventually monetize its AI services.

Continue Reading

Technology

UK faces legal challenge over attempt to force through data center development

Published

on

By

UK faces legal challenge over attempt to force through data center development

Erik Isakson | Digitalvision | Getty Images

The U.K. government is facing a legal challenge from campaigners over its decision to override a local authority and wave through development of a new “hyperscale” data center.

Last year, the local authority of Buckinghamshire, England, denied planning permission for proposals to build a new 90-megawatt data center on green belt land. The green belt is a term in British town planning that refers to an area of open land on which building is restricted.

Data centers, large facilities that house floods of computing systems to enable remote delivery of various IT services, have seen huge demand in recent years amid a global rush to develop powerful new AI systems, such as OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT chatbot.

At the same time, they have been met with concerns from environmental campaigners and activists due to the vast amounts of power they require to keep them running on an ongoing basis. AI, in particular, has been criticized for consuming massive amounts of energy.

Plans to develop the Buckinghamshire facility were twice rejected by the council previously. However, they were again resurrected under the Labour government, which is pushing to make the U.K. a global artificial intelligence hub by ramping up national computing capacity.

Buckinghamshire council again rejected the planned data center in June 2024, saying it would be “inappropriate” to develop it on the green belt. Then, last month, British Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner granted planning permission for the project, overturning the local authority’s decision.

Campaign groups Foxglove and Global Action Plan announced on Thursday that they filed a formal planning statutory review asking a court to quash Rayner’s approval of the data center, raising concerns over the vast amounts of power and water such facilities require.

“Angela Rayner appears to either not know the difference between a power station that actually produces energy and a substation that just links you to the grid — or simply not care,” Foxglove Co-executive Director Rosa Curling, said in a statement Thursday. 

“Either way, thanks to her decision, local people and businesses in Buckinghamshire will soon be competing with a power guzzling-behemoth to keep the lights on, which as we’ve seen in the States, usually means sky-high prices.”

The U.K. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government — which Rayner also leads — declined to comment on the legal action when asked about it by CNBC. The government has previously stressed the importance of building data center infrastructure to compete on a global level in AI development.

Thursday’s move comes after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in January announced plans to block campaigners from making repeated legal challenges from so-called “Nimbys” to planning decisions for major infrastructure projects in England and Wales.

Nimby is a derogatory term that refers to people who protest developments they view as unpleasant or hazardous to their local area.

Europe’s battle for power spurs evolution of a new ecosystem for data centers

Continue Reading

Trending