Taiwan's VR Decade: From Cher Wang's 'Year One' to Selling the Team to Google

In 2016, HTC unveiled the consumer Vive at MWC Barcelona and Cher Wang declared it the "Year of VR." That same year, Taiwan saw its first VR/AR industry association, its first VR internet café, and its first VR theme park. Nine years later, in January 2025, HTC sold its XR research and development team to Google for $250 million. In the intervening years, Taiwanese artists won the Best VR Experience prize at the Venice Film Festival twice — yet Taiwan's VR hardware market share collapsed from 35% to below 2%. This is the story of an island's bet on the next big thing: its inflation, and its slow cooling.

The Gamble in Barcelona

December 18, 2015. HTC VIVE UNBOUND developer summit. HTC Chairwoman Cher Wang stepped onto the stage, a massive projection of a black headset glowing behind her. "2016 will be the Year of VR," she said. Two months later, Vive made its public debut at MWC Barcelona.¹

HTC needed a gamble. The phone empire that had crested at a stock price above NT$1,000 had already collapsed; 2015 revenues were less than a third of the peak. Wang staked everything on the Vive headset, co-developed with game company Valve. The logic was clear: pair Valve's SteamVR software platform with HTC's hardware manufacturing — replicate the earlier partnership with Google and Android.²

April 2016. The consumer HTC Vive shipped at $799. Bundled with two hand controllers and two Lighthouse base stations, it could track spatial position at millimeter precision across an entire room. That same year, Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR also launched. Three players out of the gate simultaneously — but Vive's "room-scale" tracking was uniquely advanced at the time.³

In October, Wang revealed that Vive sales were "far above 140,000 units." TrendForce estimated global VR device shipments for 2016 at 2.91 million units, with Vive accounting for roughly 420,000.⁴ The numbers weren't staggering, but the imagination of an entire island had already been ignited.

2016: Taiwan's VR Gold Rush

The speed at which Taiwan's VR ecosystem germinated that year is, looking back, almost surreal.

In March, a group of passionate entrepreneurs established TAVAR (Taiwan VR/AR Industry Association) in Taipei — Taiwan's first VR/AR industry body — and released an industry white paper by year's end.⁵ Simultaneously, "Geek Den," co-sponsored by ASUS, Acer, MSI, and Gigabyte, became Taiwan's first VR/AR developer support hub, with Unity and NVIDIA as technical partners.

In April, HTC launched the Asia-Pacific VR Industry Alliance (APVRA) and the Vive X accelerator, backed by a global VR investment fund exceeding $100 million. In June it brought 28 international venture firms together to form the VR Venture Capital Alliance (VRVCA), claiming "ten billion dollars flowing into VR content."⁶

Offline, things exploded. "Dare Vision" in Zhongli became Taiwan's first VR internet café — 80 pings, 9 experience rooms, partnered with ASUS. HTC opened a 100-ping VIVELAND virtual reality theme park at the Syntrend Creative Park in Taipei. Janfusun Fancyworld installed Asia's first VR roller coaster; Leofoo Village reinvented its free-fall ride with VR.⁷

In October, the Golden Bell Awards broadcast live in 360-degree panorama for the first time. As early as February, PTT had launched a VR board — netizens were seriously debating headset purchases and development tips before the industry even caught up. At the December Computer Show, TAVAR unveiled a "Virtual Dojo" exhibition hall, and President Tsai Ing-wen donned a cardboard VR viewer to experience it.

Curator's Note
The Taiwanese VR scene in 2016 had a particular atmosphere: everyone believed they were on the right side of history. HTC had hardware, Taiwan had its OEM supply chain, the government had subsidies, and young people had passion. The one thing missing was a question no one dared ask — do consumers actually want to strap a one-kilogram device to their face?

The Peak of the Golden Age: Government Bets and Artistic Breakthroughs

From 2017 to 2018, the government doubled down.

The Executive Yuan's Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program allocated NT$1 billion to build a "haptic technology base" in Kaohsiung. The Ministry of Culture launched a "New Media Cross-Platform Content Production Plan" encouraging VR/AR filmmaking. The Ministry of Economic Affairs' Digital Content Industry Promotion Office co-hosted VR hackathons with TAVAR.⁸ From central to local government, the two letters "VR" became a magic incantation for unlocking budget approvals.

But what truly put Taiwan on the international map was art.

In 2017, the Venice Film Festival established its VR competition for the first time. New media artist Hsin-Chien Huang, collaborating with American musician Laurie Anderson, took the Best VR Experience prize for Chalkroom — eight interconnected rooms in which viewers float through a maze of blackboards symbolizing memory.⁹ Taiwan's name appeared for the first time at the international pinnacle of VR art.

In 2018, the VR Haptic Theater at the Pier-2 Art Center in Kaohsiung officially opened, billed as the world's only stereoscopic 8K VR theater. Behind it was Kaohsiung Film Archive's VR FILM LAB grant program, which had been investing in original Taiwanese VR films since 2017. This program would become the most resilient lifeline for Taiwanese VR content.¹⁰

That same year, HTC unveiled the VIVE Pro at CES, sweeping 24 awards. On paper, everything was rising.

But the temperature of the market and the noise of the trade show were two different things.

Cold Water: Consumers Don't Buy In

In 2019, HTC's full-year revenue was NT$10.015 billion — an 84% freefall from 2017.¹¹ VR wasn't the only cause; the ongoing hemorrhage from the phone business was the real culprit. But VR had also failed to become a lifeline.

What went wrong? IDC data showed global VR/AR device shipments for 2019 at only 7.6 million units. Compared to the over one billion smartphones shipped globally each year, VR was still an infant market.¹² The Vive cost $799, required a high-end PC, and demanded a whole cleared room for the base stations. An expensive toy for hardcore gamers — still a long way from a mass consumer product.

Taiwan's VR experience shops entered a shakeout. The VR internet cafés and experience spaces that had opened in 2016 had visibly thinned by 2019. Consumers found the experience novel once, but rarely came back a second time. VIVELAND relocated from Taipei's Syntrend to Kaohsiung's Pier 7, shrank in scale, and shifted its positioning from "VR trend leader" to "family tourism destination."

Did you know?
By 2019, Sony's PS VR had cumulatively sold 5 million units — riding the back of PlayStation's vast game library. HTC had no such content moat. A killer app for the Vive never materialized.

The Former HTC CEO's Parallel Universe

In 2017, one person left HTC.

Peter Chou — the technical soul of HTC's PDA-to-smartphone era, its former CEO — founded XRSPACE. His ambitions went beyond HTC: the goal was to transcend hardware and build a "social VR platform," a Taiwanese version of Ready Player One.¹³

In May 2020, XRSPACE unveiled the MOVA all-in-one headset and virtual social platform MANOVA. In July, in partnership with Chunghwa Telecom, users could take home a VR headset bundled with a 5G plan for NT$1,990 per month. Chou said: "Seven out of ten future experiences will happen in XR; phones will account for only three."¹⁴

In February 2022, Foxconn announced an investment in XRSPACE — $15 million in the first tranche, potentially up to $100 million in total.¹⁵ That November, XRSPACE built a virtual Beigang Chaotian Temple on its GOXR platform, claiming over 30,000 unique visitors.

But the core dilemma of "social VR" was never solved: convincing ordinary people to strap on a headset every day and chat with virtual avatars is a hard sell. Meta's Horizon Worlds, with the world's largest VR user base behind it, had only 300,000 monthly active users within three months of launch.¹⁶ XRSPACE's user numbers were never disclosed, and subsequent news became increasingly sparse.

2021: The Moment the Bubble Inflated to Its Maximum

October 28, 2021. Mark Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook as Meta and declared an all-in bet on the metaverse. The global tech industry's adrenaline surged instantly.¹⁷

HTC followed immediately. At 2022 MWC, Cher Wang unveiled the metaverse platform VIVERSE, aiming to integrate VR, AR, AI, blockchain, and 5G into a single open environment.¹⁸ That summer saw the launch of the HTC Desire 22 Pro phone, marketed as a "gateway to the metaverse," with built-in VIVERSE apps and NFT blind boxes.

Taiwan's VR circles boiled again. "Metaverse" became the highest-frequency term in tech media during 2022. Any startup pitch deck that included the word "Metaverse" could land a meeting.

But if you looked at the numbers closely, the story was already turning.

The Collapse

November 2022. Meta laid off 11,000 people. Reality Labs (the metaverse division) lost $13.7 billion for the full year.¹⁹

January 2023. Tencent's XR division, established only half a year earlier, was reported to have fully suspended operations. February brought confirmation of the team's dissolution. A global XR layoff wave cascaded outward.

HTC Vive's market share collapse was a microcosm of the entire VR market structure inverting. Meta had seized the consumer market with the Quest 2's $299 price point, leading the global VR market by 2023.²⁰ HTC retreated to the enterprise segment, but enterprise budgets were also contracting amid economic slowdown.

VIVERSE's user numbers were never disclosed. In rankings of the most-used metaverse platforms (VRChat, Resonite, Cluster), VIVERSE never appeared in the top tier. The "open metaverse" that HTC poured vast resources into building ended up like a virtual city with no visitors.

Point of Debate
Some argue that HTC's VR pivot was "right direction, too early" — that when VR eventually reaches mass adoption, first-mover advantages will pay off. But a harsher view runs deeper: HTC's problem was realizing too late that it lacked a content ecosystem. Hardware can lead, but without a reason to make people put on a headset every day, hardware is just an expensive mask.

January 2025: Sold to Google

January 23, 2025. HTC announced a deal signed with Google.²¹

Core terms: Google pays $250 million in cash; some members of HTC's XR R&D team join Google to help develop the Android XR platform; HTC grants Google a non-exclusive license to use its XR intellectual property.

This was almost a replay of 2017, when Google spent $1.1 billion to acquire 2,000 engineers from HTC's phone division.²² History repeated itself — only at a quarter of the price, and this time it was HTC's last remaining technical ace being sold.

HTC stated that the VIVE brand would remain, its product lines would continue, but the market had already read the signal: HTC's VR hardware story was essentially over. In early 2026, HTC's revenue for the trailing twelve months was approximately $93 million, with a market cap that had shrunk to NT$37 billion — less than 4% of its 2011 peak.

One Thing That Survived

The most paradoxical conclusion to Taiwan's VR decade is this: the hardware collapsed entirely, but art survived.

In 2022, director Singing Chen's white terror-themed VR film The Starry Sand Beach, shot in 8K VR 360 technology, won Best VR Experience at the 79th Venice Film Festival.²³ This was the second time Taiwan carved its name into the highest honor of VR art at Venice, following Hsin-Chien Huang in 2017.

By the end of 2024, Kaohsiung's VR FILM LAB had produced over 35 original and internationally co-produced VR works, selected for Venice, Sundance, SXSW, and the Cannes film market. The Kaohsiung Film Festival's 2024 "XR Infinite Realms" had already become Asia's largest XR competition.²⁴

The way VR survived in Taiwan looked nothing like anyone expected. Hardware manufacturers retreated. Metaverse platforms went cold. VR internet cafés closed. What remained at the end were the people who told stories with cameras and code.

What Hollywood Saw in Taiwan

Taiwan's VR content track record caught the attention of international entertainment media.

At the 2021 Venice Film Festival's VR competition, 7 of the 37 selected works came from Taiwan — a record for any single country or region. Variety (one of Hollywood's most influential trade publications) ran a piece headlined "Taiwan Content Raises Its Game as Festival VR Section Becomes Venice Immersive," noting that Taiwanese creators enjoy a relatively open creative environment and are willing to experiment.²⁶

The Hollywood Reporter was even more direct in its headline: "Venice: Taiwan's Virtual Reality Industry Takes Fest by Storm." The piece analyzed Taiwan's competitive advantages in VR content: the hardware manufacturing base derived from the world's largest semiconductor industry, policy funding from TAICCA (Taiwan Creative Content Agency), and the artistic freedom available to creators — "which gives Taiwan a distinct advantage over China's creative industry."²⁷

Voices of VR Podcast (one of the world's most influential VR industry podcasts) devoted a full episode to interviewing representatives from TAICCA and the Kaohsiung Film Festival, exploring Taiwan's model of immersive storytelling innovation.²⁸

Data note
In 2022, TAICCA established the Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Immersive Market, showcasing 74 immersive content projects, venues, and technology companies — making Taiwan one of the largest national pavilions at the Venice Immersive Market.

HTC's Other Path: Virtual Idols

HTC, with its hardware market share at rock bottom, found a new outlet for its VR technology in an unexpected direction: VTubers and virtual concerts.

In September 2021, HTC VIVE ORIGINALS launched BEATDAY, billed as the world's first holographic music platform. The platform uses volumetric capture technology to record performers from multiple angles simultaneously, allowing audiences to enter a 360-degree holographic concert space as virtual avatars.²⁹

The technical core comes from VIVE's already-strong tracking systems: Lighthouse base station positioning, VIVE Tracker motion capture, and a face tracker that can capture 38 facial blend shapes (lips, teeth, tongue, jaw, cheeks) in real time at 60Hz.³⁰ Technologies originally developed for VR gaming were redeployed for virtual idol motion capture.

In 2025, VIVE ORIGINALS partnered with Chunyu VTuber Studio to produce Chase the Boss — billed as the world's first large-venue VTuber XR music film. That same year, Warner Music Taiwan's virtual artist NANA entered the VIVERSE metaverse space through the VIVE Mars virtual production system.³¹

The road to selling headsets had reached a dead end, but HTC's tracking and spatial positioning technology remained its core competitive strength. Pivoting these technologies from "making you put on a headset to enter a virtual world" to "making virtual characters enter the real stage" was a quiet but precise turn.

The Map, Ten Years Later

Looking back over a decade, Taiwan's VR arc was nearly synchronized with the global trajectory — but with a few uniquely Taiwanese facets.

Taiwan is one of the rare places to simultaneously have a VR hardware leader (HTC) and internationally-recognized VR content creators (Hsin-Chien Huang, Singing Chen, VR FILM LAB). But the hardware and content tracks never truly converged. HTC's ecosystem centered on gaming and enterprise; Kaohsiung's VR films traveled the festival and arts circuit. Two parallel lines, each advancing independently, with a vast blank space between them.

In its first year, TAVAR accomplished a remarkable volume of foundational work: 112 members (69 individuals, 43 organizations), Taiwan's first VR/AR industry white paper, the first VR HackFest (150 registrants, 19 competing teams), sponsoring startups into Silicon Valley's BoostVC accelerator, and establishing a partnership with South Korea's Jeonnam VR Industry Agency.³³ These formed the bedrock of Taiwan's VR ecosystem. When industry enthusiasm cooled, the association's voice receded too — but the bedrock didn't disappear. Every VR project that subsequently received Forward-looking Plan funding was built on top of it.

Academia also left its mark. The lab of Ko Jou-chun (known as "Dr. Bao," assistant professor in interactive design at NTUT from 2017–2022, now a legislator) accumulated substantial research in VR content creation and immersive experience design, including the "100 Careers for a Day" 360° VR workplace experience program in partnership with the Ministry of Education — producing 25 high-resolution panoramic films.³⁴ When the hot money retreated from the industry side, academic research energy became the most stable layer of Taiwan's VR knowledge base.

XRSPACE's Peter Chou wanted to build "social VR." HTC's Cher Wang wanted an "open metaverse." Two former HTC people ran in different directions, and ended up in the same wasteland.

But the story didn't end there. Artists went to Venice, and Hollywood media noticed. HTC's tracking technology migrated from headsets to virtual idols. The VR haptic theater in Kaohsiung is still running.

"Where will VR take the world?" Hsin-Chien Huang, Singing Chen, and Tsai Ming-liang were asked this question in a VERSE magazine conversation. Their answer was quiet and concrete: the core of VR is making you truly stand in another person's place. Heard in 2026, that answer carries more weight than any metaverse slogan ever did.³²

January 2025. Google took HTC's XR engineers for $250 million. At Pier-2 in Kaohsiung, the VR haptic theater is still screening Singing Chen's work. A visitor puts on a headset and walks into Green Island Prison in the 1950s. In the adjacent room, a virtual idol dances with a VIVE Tracker.

Two rooms. One technology. Two futures.

Further Reading

• Taiwan Corporate Profile: HTC — HTC's corporate biography, from Android phones to the VR pivot
• Taiwan's Open Source Spirit — Another story of a Taiwanese tech community running on passion
• Taiwan Digital Imaging and Animation Industry — The technical and human foundations behind VR content

References