Author: Amanda Giasson

According to HTC China’s President, VR is going to last longer than the smartphone cycle.

Virtual reality (VR) is going to dominate smartphones within four years, says Alvin Graylin, president of HTC China. Speaking at Mobile World Congress Shanghai, Graylin said that VR is the upcoming disruptor that will dominate mobile phones. It took smarpthones five years to surpass the total unit sales of PC and now he predicts VR will do the same to Smartphones in four years.

“VR is going to take over, and I predict it will last longer than nine years,” Graylin stated. “It’s going to replace every screen, and users will enjoy a different way to experience things like live events.”

HTC plans to invest billions in the future of VR.

HTC, the Taiwanese consumer electronics company, recently launched a consortium that brings together 28 of the world’s biggest VC (venture capital) firms. This consortium is dedicated to investing $10 billion in the future of virtual reality.

Graylin said at the Mobile World Congress that the VR VC Alliance will not only invest in a VR future but also set the direction for where this immersive technology is headed. “Think about what $10 billion can do for this industry,” he stated.

Graylin boasts that HTC’s virtual reality hardware is far superior to its competition.

HTC has put a great deal of time, effort and money into its VR headset Vive. Graylin said that compared to the VR hardware of other companies like Oculus, Samsung and Sony, Vive is way ahead of the game in terms of providing both a higher quality experience and having far more content.

Currently, Vive already has over 300 titles and Graylin said that this is like to become a “four-digit number very soon.” The executive expressed that the success of VR also depends on great content.

HTC launched its $100 million Vive X fund program two months ago. The program is designed to jump-start development. According to Graylin, the company has already received 1,200 applications from companies across the globe. Half of the companies are from China.

As for its plans to spin off its virtual reality group, an independent company was recently approved by the HTC board to operate the Vive business.

InMobi has agreed to settle charges from US FTC and will pay nearly $1 million in penalties.

Illegal location tracking charges have been placed against Indian-based mobile advertising company InMobi by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The mobile ad network is subject to a $4 million fine by the FTC for deceptively tracking the locations of consumers. However, the fine was lowered to $950,000, due to the company’s financial condition.

Hundreds of millions of consumers were tracked, including children.

The FTC alleges that InMobi illegally tracked consumers’ locations and used this information for behaviorally targeted advertising. InMobi’s advertising software tracked the locations of consumer’s when they opted in, but not always in accordance with their device’s privacy settings. The company was actually tracking the locations of consumers regardless of whether or not the apps using the company’s software asked the consumer’s permission. Even when consumer denied permission to access their location information, they were tracked anyway.

To make matters worse, according to the FTC, InMobi also violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). It did so by collecting information from applications that were directed at children, even though InMobi promised that it didn’t.

What the FTC discovered was that InMobi developed a database built on the information the company gathered from consumers who allowed InMobi to access their geolocation data. This data was combined with the wireless networks that were near consumers in order to document the physical location of the actual wireless networks. The company then used that database to deduce the consumer’s physical location based on the networks they were close to. This occurred even when they had the location collection feature of their device turned off.

In addition to its illegal location tracking fine, InMobi must adhere to stiff rules.

Aside from paying the $950,000 fine, InMobi must also delete all the data it collected from children. The company will be prohibited from collecting the location information from consumers without their express consent. They will also be required to honor the location privacy settings of their consumers. Additionally, information collected without consent must also be deleted.

The settlement resulting from the illegal location tracking fiasco will also require InMobi to set up a comprehensive privacy program. For the next 20 years, this privacy program will be independently audited every two years.