First Android Smartphone Maker
HTC (High Tech Computer Corporation) is a Taiwan-based consumer electronics company, founded in 1997. Initially, it started off as a laptop manufacturer and then designed some of the world's first touch and wireless hand-held devices in 1998. From 2004, HTC started manufacturing Windows Mobile PDAs and smartphones under the Qtek brand which later on rebranded as HTC with the launch of the HTC TyTN.
After making smartphones, HTC became a co-founding member of the Open Handset Alliance, a group of handset manufacturers and mobile network operators dedicated to Android OS development. HTC Dream (also known as T-Mobile G1) was the first phone in the market to run Android. The company became hugely popular and innovator with its HTC Desire, HTC One, and other lines of smartphone models. ( Read more)
HTC was a successful smartphone vendor, until the competition from Apple and Samsung, among other brands, weakened its market share drastically, reaching just 7.2% by April 2015. Moreover, the company experienced consecutive net losses.
In 2016, HTC began to diversify its business beyond smartphones, by having partnered with Valve to produce a virtual reality platform known as HTC Vive.
Also, after having collaborated with Google on its Pixel smartphone, HTC sold roughly half of its design and research talent, as well as non-exclusive rights to smartphone-related intellectual property, to Google in 2017 for US$1.1 billion.
Presently, HTC continues to produce smartphones, but the company’s primary focus has now been shifted to the Internet of Things (IoT) and Virtual Reality (VR) devices and technologies. (Also, learn how Webkul is implementing AR technology into the real e-commerce world.)
Virtual Reality Platform Developed by HTC & Valve
VIVE is a first-of-its-kind virtual reality platform developed by HTC and Valve together. Designed from the ground up for room-scale VR and true-to-life interactions, VIVE delivers on the promise of VR with game-changing technology and best-in-class content. VIVE has been recognized with over 65 awards and wide critical acclaim.
HTC Vive virtual reality platform and a virtual reality headset was distinguished by its "Lighthouse" motion tracking system, where sensors on the headset and its included motion controllers read the position of two base station devices mounted in the play area.
This would allow for "Room-Scale" VR experiences, where the player would not be required to remain in a stationary position in front of a camera and would be able to freely walk around the space.
Building Video Game Digital Marketplace
Valve Corporation is an American video game developer, publisher, and digital distribution company. It developed the software distribution platform Steam and popular gaming titles such as - Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Team Fortress, and Left 4 Dead.
Alongside developing games, Valve developed Steam, a digital storefront and delivery platform. The concept of Steam bore out of Valve trying to maintain patches for games like Counter-Strike so that all players were up-to-date. Failing to gain help from other third-party developers, Valve took it on themselves to build out Steam, which was first introduced in 2002, and eventually became mandatory by the time of Half-Life 2's release.
Steam initially offered only Valve's games, but they soon allowed third-party developers to sell on the service with Valve taking a cut of the revenues for maintaining the storefront and content delivery. The Steam gaming market platform eventually became the most significant way gamers on the personal computer acquire digital games accounting for up to 70% of all digital sales.
Virtual Reality (VR) Headset Market
To experience VR, you need a virtual reality kit that includes multiple things. You need a VR headset, motion controllers, radar sensors, cameras, and a high-spec gaming computer or console. Currently, there are dozens of manufacturers available that make Virtual Reality headset systems. But only a few companies offer the real VR immersive experience - Oculus (by Facebook), HTC Vive, Sony PlayStation VR, and Valve Index.
Once you set up your preferred VR system, the next thing is you need to find VR games, apps, and content that supports the VR platform. Every VR company has created its own online store where consumers can buy and download different genres of VR game titles.
HTC VIVEPORT - VR Apps, Games, and Videos Marketplace
VIVEPORT is the app store for virtual reality content and experiences, developed and managed by HTC Corporation. It features a wide range of VR experiences to discover, create, connect, watch, and shop in VR. Viveport Virtual Reality content store and subscription service are available to more than 70 countries.
Users can explore a wide range of immersive experiences across 2000+ apps, games, and videos. For developers, Viveport offers the most ways to distribute and monetize content to a brand new audience.
Unlike Oculus and PlayStation VR store that offers content for their own headset devices. VIVEPORT offers game titles for various other VR platforms as well. Similarly, Steam also allows users to browse VR titles for Valve Index, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Windows Mixed Reality, and other SteamVR-compatible headsets.
VIVEPORT Marketplace Business Model
Viveport has two primary transaction models. Customers can either download an individual title (free or at a fixed price set by the developer) or join the Viveport Infinity (subscription service).
Similar to other digital stores, if you have a paid title on Viveport, developers will get 70% of the revenue generated from the content. While the remaining is kept by the marketplace for running its operations and distribution services.
The marketplace business model is necessary and it is adopted by many online stores even for digital products. With this, the consumers get to browse and choose products from a wide range of categories by multiple vendors in one place. Rather than, visiting multiple separate online stores, signing up, creating accounts, and making the purchase process more lengthier and tiring.
Marketplaces like Steam and Viveport are beneficial for new developers who need exposure and a universal platform to distribute their content globally. With strict content guidelines and a review process, the marketplace also ensures that the game content is ready for public release.
“We're happy to let VR fans know that the same way they discover and consume content through popular subscription services for music, films, TV and games is coming to virtual reality,” said Rikard Steiber, President of Viveport. “For developers, this is yet another opportunity for them to reach broader audiences – we want to give VR developers as many ways as possible to monetize and feature their content, and this is yet another channel for them to reach new customers on Viveport.” Read the complete press release here.
Building B2B Digital Storefront
HTC is continuously researching and developing to enhance the VR app store experience for both consumers and business users. Webkul also got a part in contributing our e-commerce expertise in VIVEPORT development.
The premium VR company enquired Webkul regarding the Magento 2 B2B Marketplace and other extensions. VIVEPORT digital store is developed on the Magento 2 e-commerce platform, built on PHP framework, it allows complete code customization, and has a huge market of third-party extensions.
Great product
"The combination of this fix rate plugin and vendor marketplace plugin perfectly meet our needs that simplified buyer's shipping fee calculation. Just it will be even greater if Webkul could provide calculated fee per vendor on shipping cart and with API."
VIVEPORT Wallet
Online wallets or digital wallets are used by the majority of e-commerce store owners. It is beneficial for both consumers and merchants. There is no need to fill up the card or other sensitive details again, also you don't need to save your card in the online store account.
Wallet payment method transactions are fast, there are no third-party website redirections, so the chances of payment getting failed is negligible. For merchants, it provides a combination of protection against fraud, faster receipt of payment, decreased transaction costs, and decreased theft loss.
Viveport also has an online wallet system integrated into its app store. You add credits into your wallet via various payment methods and use that wallet fund to purchase content with no service fee or expiration date. The currency added to your Viveport wallet is region-specific.
The existing wallet system works great, but to use the wallet payment method to complete a Viveport purchase, you must have a sufficient wallet balance to cover the entire purchase cost. If your wallet balance does not cover the entire cost of purchase, you will be required to use an alternate payment method.
Viveport wanted to upgrade its wallet system to be able and allow customers for doing partial payment during checkout. So that the remaining purchase amount can be paid via. other payment methods. Although, customers can still go ahead and add top-up into their wallets until they meet the desired order amount, but this process is tedious. Also, note that, while we add funds to our wallet account, all the items in the shopping cart needs to be removed first.
To make the wallet payment transactions more user friendly and convenient for shoppers, Viveport is currently working with Webkul and exploring Magento 2 Wallet System to be incorporated into the online store.
Besides providing a partial payment facility, Webkul's Wallet System comes with many other features and benefits:
- Transfer wallet amount to the bank
- Secure transactions with OTP
- Adjust customer wallet amount from the admin panel
- Select payment methods to fund the wallet
- Create cashback rules
- Transfer fund from one wallet account to another wallet account
Further, Webkul offers complete code customization for additional changes and requirements.
HTC VIVE offers a complete line-up of high-end VR Systems for gaming, education, arts, design, research, collaboration, and more. All the VR products are categorized under different series and are available for purchase based on your region. You can shop for Cosmos, Pro Eye, Pro, and VIVE series of HTC VR headsets, full system kits, and accessories.
To make the availability of the product at global markets, HTC distributes its VR based products via authorized resellers and merchants. Consumers can simply visit vive.com, select the VR hardware to buy, after that, they're redirected to the Magento hosted platform (https://myshop.vive.com/) to do payment and complete the checkout process.
Once an order is confirmed the details are sent to HTC's vendor for fulfilment and shipment. Having reliable logistics and distribution partners plays an important role in the company's brand. With promised deliveries and safe handling of equipment, consumers will always feel secured and continue to have trust in brands like HTC.
On the subject of shipping, Casper Wang (Software Architect at HTC) was having a query related to vendor product shipment. He was looking for a customized solution where each vendor could be able to restrict their shipping methods based on the product at the individual level.
Further, the company needed the order splitting workflow where the customer who has ordered multiple items from different resellers/vendors in one checkout, can be divided into separate orders. HTC project team wanted to provide their sellers to control the shipment methods for each product separately and further divide the multi-items single order into several order IDs.
Besides the marketplace, wallet system there are more than 20+ solutions purchased by the HTC VIVE team for their Magento based online store. Being a powerful e-commerce platform, Magento is highly scalable, supports multi-store, multi-lingual store setup, and offers complete backend, and frontend customization capabilities for the developers.
Split Shopping Cart Items
In addition to shop content from the VIVEPORT digital store, customers also have the option to enjoy unlimited premium VR content through its subscription service, called Infinity. It is the world’s first-ever unlimited VR subscription service, and provides access to a variety of benefits and downloadable content:
- Limitless access to over 1000 VR games, apps, & videos
- Premium channels & content in Viveport Video, available only to subscribers
- Monthly subscriber benefits like exclusive offers, and free games to keep in your library forever
Since HTC Viveport offers a separate pricing system for its content - (paid, membership, free) the company wanted to simplify the shopping cart workflow for this. Currently, there is no in-built feature inside Magento that allows multiple shopping carts or split cart systems.
Based on market requirements, Webkul has developed the Magento 2 Split Cart solution, that enables the store admin to create a separate shopping cart checkout for multiple types of items. With this extension, you can define the attribute based on which the cart items will be segregated and a separate checkout process will be followed on the storefront.
Multiple Wishlist
The wishlist feature is available by default on almost all e-commerce platforms. If a buyer hasn’t made up the mind about what VR content to download, or buy, you can easily save and add those items to the Viveport wishlist. Once items are added, they can be viewed at any time from the Viveport store account under the My Wish Lists section.
Consumers can add multiple items to the wishing list, but there is no option to categorize or organize those items. What if someone wants to create a wish list for specific genres, gaming platforms, etc. Nobody wants to browse the whole collection again and handpick the favourite items again. To make the wishlist experience more helpful, Viveport opted for Webkul's Magento 2 Multiple Wishlist extension. Allowing shoppers to add their favourite VR apps and games in an organized way.
At present, many ongoing developments are still happening as there many new changes and updates are lined up on Viveport. But, nevertheless, Webkul is always ready to team up with HTC VIVE company and work together to build and enhance the leading VR digital marketplace experience further.
Client Feedback Review
You can also read below the client reviews posted on Webkul Store to show the appreciation for the work delivered by Webkul Team:
- https://store.webkul.com/magento2-multi-vendor-category-attribute-mapping.html#reviews
- https://store.webkul.com/magento2-multi-vendor-fixed-shipping-rate.html#reviews
Work as expected
"Finally found this plugin to assign custom attributes to vendor to manage by themselves. Simply update the config of attribute mapping then vendor could have related attribute to set in product edit/create form. Work as charm, great job."
References
- https://www.htc.com/us/about/
- https://www.viveport.com/
- https://www.vive.com/us/newsroom/2017-01-04-2/
Disclaimer - HTC, VIVE, the HTC logo, and the VIVE logo are the trademarks of HTC Corporation. All other names of companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. If you have any issues or complaints related to this article, please send us an email to [email protected]
