LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Virtual reality (VR) technology company VR Education announced on Tuesday that its partner, HTC Corporation, has launched 'ENGAGE' in China, reselling the platform as 'VIVE Sessions'.
The AIM-traded firm said the new service would focus on large-scale conferences, exhibitions and educational events in China, with HTC providing the necessary enterprise sales, support and marketing in the region.

It described 'VIVE XR Suite', which included VIVE Sessions and was being launched globally, as an enterprise-focused integrated VR software bundle of applications which would enable users to collaborate, even when physically apart, via PCs, phones, tablets and most major VR devices.

The virtual launch event was conducted in the VIVE Sessions application, where "thousands of attendees" joined in avatar form from.

HTC announced that Accenture would be a distribution partner for the XR Suite to their clients globally.

The company said the VIVE XR Suite consists of applications designed to meet the challenges of working, learning and living remotely.

It said the integrated bundle would provide a collection of solutions for real-time collaboration, virtual events, and life-like communication using "the latest spatial computing technology".

On 20 May, VR Education announced a "significant investment" from HTC, which now holds a stake of around 20% in the firm.

On the same date, HTC also signed a distribution and license agreement with the group for an initial four-year period, appointing HTC as its exclusive distributor throughout the Greater China region, being Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and the People's Republic of China, and as its non-exclusive distributor for the rest of the world.

Under the terms of the agreement, HTC agreed to pay a percentage of net revenue as collected by HTC in the Greater China region.

"We have been working closely with HTC's China team over the past six months extensively testing the Chinese deployment of VIVE Sessions," said chief executive officer David Whelan.

"With so many challenges in acceptance for European developed software to be deployed into the Chinese market, we are delighted to be working with HTC as our partner which has made this difficult task possible.

"China is one of the world's largest markets and a leader in XR adoption."

Whelan said that having ENGAGE services available for Chinese users under the VIVE brand, and a "robust" HTC sales and marketing team with a track record for enterprise sales, would help create additional revenues for the group going forward.

"We have seen high demand for ENGAGE services globally because of Covid-19 concerns and we hope to see significant demand in China for VIVE Sessions.

"We believe that ENGAGE will have broader appeal to Asian users who are typically quicker to adopt new technologies."

The Chinese release of ENGAGE was a "major milestone" for the group, Whelan said, adding that it was "rare" for a medium-sized business like VR Education.

"Our aim is to become the dominant next generation global communications platform, and this is one step towards us achieving that goal.

"This additional revenue stream from working with HTC will take a little time to mature, however, we believe it sets solid foundations for both companies as we grow the XR space together."

At 1259 BST, shares in VR Education were up 7.03% at 19.8p.

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