Asian Tech Press (Mar. 3) -- Taiwan-based HTC Corp., once known as the king of Android phone makers, has made a new move after four years, rumored to launch a flagship Android phone integrating metaverse features as early as next month.

During the MWC 2022, Taiwanese media outlet DigiTimes quoted HTC Vive Asia-Pacific GM Charles Huang as saying that HTC will release a new phone in April, which will be HTC's first real flagship in 4 years after the release of the U12+ phone in 2018.

Back in 2017, HTC announced that it had sold its cell phone team to Google Inc. for $1.1 billion, and HTC's own smartphone business gave way to virtual reality (VR), resulting in no flagship machine coming out for more than 4 years. The move once made people suspect that HTC was going to quit the cell phone market.

Specific information about HTC's upcoming phone product is still unknown, but the company said the new phone will focus on AR/VR applications and will support HTC's open-source metaverse platform Viveverse.