HTC published Q3 numbers which gave little room for optimism, as it was reported the company also shelved a VR project it was working on with Google.

The company reported a Q3 loss of TWD3.1 billion ($103 million), compared with a prior-year loss of TWD1.8 billion; on revenue of TWD15.7 billion, down from TWD22.2 billion. Its cash pile shrank to TWD23 billion from TWD34.3 billion in Q3 2016 – and from TWD31 billion in Q2 2017.

HTC provided little in the way of colour for the numbers.

Having gone through a number of cuts as it looked to return to profitability, HTC recently inked a $1.1 billion deal which will see a number of staff transferred to Google. HTC was the contract manufacture partner for the search giant’s Pixel smartphones.

The vendor said it is “working on the next flagship phone”; is continuing to build its VR business; and is investing in “other next-generation technologies, including IoT, augmented reality and artificial intelligence”.

VR update
TechCrunch reported HTC and Google both confirmed a Daydream-branded HTC standalone headset would not be brought “to western markets”. HTC this week unveiled Vive Focus, a standalone device for the Chinese market “specifically designed to appeal to a mass market audience”.

Vive Focus is built on HTC’s new Vive Wave open VR platform and toolset, which it said will “open up the path to easy mobile VR content development and high-performance device optimisation for third-party partners”. Some 12 hardware partners announced support for the integration of Vive Wave, along with the Viveport VR content platform, into future products.

In a statement, the company said Vive Wave is “a clear step forward in bringing together the highly fragmented mobile VR market that has grown up in China over the last several years”.

TechCrunch said while the US had been a “slow struggle platform-wise for Vive”, China was more successful.