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
Apple wouldn’t be the only company getting in on the XR game. In October, Meta launched its $1,500 Quest Pro device, which lets users interact with virtual objects that appear in a full-color view of the world around them.
Earlier this week, a Samsung executive said that the South Korean electronics giant is “working out” its mixed reality strategy. Microsoft has its own mixed reality headset, called HoloLens. On Monday, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi took the wraps off of a prototype set of augmented reality glasses.
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
The Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, June 9, 2023.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Silicon Valley executives and financiers publicly opened their wallets in support of President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential run. The early returns in 2025 aren’t great, to say the least.
Following Trump’s sweeping tariff plan announced Wednesday, the Nasdaq suffered steep consecutive daily drops to finish 10% lower for the week, the index’s worst performance since the beginning of the Covid pandemic in 2020.
The tech industry’s leading CEO’s rushed to contribute to Trump’s inauguration in January and paraded to Washington, D.C., for the event. Since then, it’s been a slog.
The market can always turn around, but economists and investors aren’t optimistic, and concerns are building of a potential recession. The seven most valuable U.S. tech companies lost a combined $1.8 trillion in market cap in two days.
Apple slid 14% for the week, its biggest drop in more than five years. Tesla, led by top Trump adviser Elon Musk, plunged 9.2% and is now down more than 40% for the year. Musk contributed close to $300 million to help propel Trump back to the White House.
Nvidia, Meta and Amazon all suffered double-digit drops for the week. For Amazon, a ninth straight weekly decline marks its longest such losing streak since 2008.
With Wall Street selling out of risky assets on concern that widespread tariff hikes will punish the U.S. and global economy, the fallout has drifted down to the IPO market. Online lender Klarna and ticketing marketplace StubHub delayed their IPOs due to market turbulence, just weeks after filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and fintech company Chime is also reportedly delaying its listing.
CoreWeave, a provider of artificial intelligence infrastructure, last week became the first venture-backed company to raise more than $1 billion in a U.S. IPO since 2021. But the company slashed its offering, and trading has been very volatile in its opening days on the market. The stock plunged 12% on Friday, leaving it 17% above its offer price but below the bottom of its initial range.
“You couldn’t create a worse market and macro environment to go public,” said Phil Haslett, co-founder of EquityZen, a platform for investing in private companies. “Way too much turbulence. All flights are grounded until further notice.”
CoreWeave investor Mark Klein of SuRo Capital previously told CNBC that the company could be the first in an “IPO parade.” Now he’s backtracking.
“It appears that the IPO parade has been temporarily halted,” Klein told CNBC by email on Friday. “The current tariff situation has prompted these companies to pause and assess its impact.”
‘Cave rapidly’
During last year’s presidential campaign, prominent venture capitalists like Marc Andreessen backed Trump, expecting that his administration would usher in a boom and eliminate some of the hurdles to startup growth set up by the Biden administration. Andreessen and his partner, Ben Horowitz, said in July that their financial support of the Trump campaign was due to what they called a better “little tech agenda.”
A spokesperson for Andreessen Horowitz declined to comment.
Some techies who supported Trump in the campaign have taken to social media to defend their positions.
Venture capitalist Keith Rabois, a managing director at Khosla Ventures, posted on X on Thursday that “Trump Derangement Syndrome has morphed into Tariff Derangement Syndrome.” He said tariffs aren’t inflationary, are effective at reducing fentanyl imports, and he expects that “most other countries will cave and cave rapidly.”
That was before China’s Finance Ministry said on Friday that it will impose a 34% tariff on all goods imported from the U.S. starting on April 10.
At Sequoia Capital, which is the biggest investor in Klarna, outspoken Trump supporter Shaun Maguire, wrote on X, “The first long-term thinking President of my lifetime,” and said in a separate post that, “The price of stocks says almost nothing about the long term health of an economy.”
However, Allianz Chief Economic Advisor Mohamed El-Erian warned on Friday that Trump’s extensive raft of import tariffs are putting the U.S. economy at risk of recession.
“You’ve had a major repricing of growth prospects, with a recession in the U.S. going up to 50% probability, you’ve seen an increase in inflation expectations, up to 3.5%,” he told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro on the sidelines of the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, Italy.
Former Microsoft CEOs Bill Gates, left, and Steve Ballmer, center, pose for photos with CEO Satya Nadella during an event celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Microsoft on April 4, 2025 in Redmond, Washington.
Stephen Brashear | Getty Images
Meanwhile, executives at tech’s megacap companies were largely silent this week, and their public relations representatives declined to provide comments about their thinking.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was in the awkward position on Friday of celebrating his company’s 50th anniversary at corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Alongside Microsoft’s prior two CEOs, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Nadella sat down with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin for a televised interview that was planned well before Trump’s tariff announcement.
When asked about the tariffs at the top of the interview, Nadella effectively dodged the question and avoided expressing his views about whether the new policies will hamper Microsoft’s business.
Ballmer, who was succeeded by Nadella in 2014, acknowledged to Sorkin that “disruption is very hard on people” and that, “as a Microsoft shareholder, this kind of thing is not good.” Ballmer and Gates are two of the 12 wealthiest people in the world thanks to their Microsoft fortunes.
C-suites may not be able to stay quiet for long, especially if the recent turmoil spills into next week.
Lise Buyer, who previously helped guide Google through its IPO and now works as an adviser to companies going public, said there’s no appetite for risk in the market under these conditions. But there is risk that staffers get jittery, and they’ll surely look to their leaders for some reassurance.
“Until markets settle out and we have the opportunity to access valuation levels, public company CEOs should work to calm potentially distressed employees,” Buyer said in an email. “And private company managements should refine plans to get by on dollars already in the treasury.”
— CNBC’s Hayden Field, Jordan Novet, Leslie Picker, Annie Palmer and Samantha Subin contributed to this report.
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