Statement of the Management
Since the founding of HTC, our vision has been to combine technology with humanity to unleash the imagination. VIVERSE, HTC’s version of the metaverse, represents the culmination of that vision: an immersive, boundless universe of fantastic new experiences, and a seamless gateway to other online universes.
As the world gradually eased pandemic restrictions over 2022, HTC doubled down on this vision, leveraging the corporate restructure to become a holistic VIVERSE company, with all business areas working towards enabling, expanding, or enhancing the metaverse. With premium products brought to market throughout the year across hardware, software, platforms and content, and new services such as our VIVERSE for Business custom build and support service starting to gain momentum in the market, HTC remains well-positioned to take full advantage of the global trend towards a truly immersive internet.
HTC’s pioneering work on the metaverse, from the soundness of our investments in the fundamental building block technologies of VR, AR, AI, 5G and blockchain to the ability of our more autonomous and focused businesses to execute our strategy, has placed us firmly on the map of key metaverse players, as recognised by global analyst firms as well as within the industry and media, with HTC earning Fast Company acclaim as one of the most innovative augmented and virtual reality companies of 2022.
To ensure the metaverse meets its full potential, HTC is strongly promoting open standards and privacy by design, as well as closer collaboration with partners – including thousands of content developers – to support interoperability, and in 2022 joined the Metaverse Standards Forum to further promulgate our vision, as well as the VRM Consortium for formulating avatar standards.
Across the spectrum of HTC’s portfolio, HTC’s premium products continue to garner high acclaim across media, the industry and customers, with the VIVE Pro 2 gaining a CES innovation award amongst many others in 2022, while the VIVE XR Elite launched in early 2023 earned considerable consumer acclaim and multiple ‘best in show’ awards at Mobile World Congress. Ensuring our businesses maintain such high standards for quality, design and functionality remains a key focus for HTC as the parent company, as well as continuing to drive process optimization, targeted investment, and e cient resource allocation.
HTC is committed to the highest standard of social care, environmental protection, and ethical integrity. We fully respect human rights and workplace rights. HTC is committed to cultivating talent as a corporate responsibility priority, and creating a workplace that is diverse, challenging, dynamic and positive.
In 2022, HTC focused on key sustainability projects such as “Pathway to Net-Zero”, the “Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD)”, and the “Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)”, and continued to participate in major worldwide ESG initiatives and ratings such as EcoVadis, the FTSE ESG Index, TCFD, and the Taiwan Corporate Sustainability Awards.
HTC’s sustainability efforts are being recognized globally. In 2022, HTC was honored to become a constituent of the FTSE4Good Index Series, a subset of the renowned FTSE ESG Index. Moreover, HTC improved its EcoVadis rating in 2022 from bronze to silver, demonstrating our improvement in the four key sustainability themes of Environment, Labor and Human Rights, Ethics, and Sustainable Procurement.
In addition, HTC continues to participate in the annual CDP rating. In the 2022 Supplier Engagement Rating (SER) report, HTC received leadership level (A-), while in the 2022 Climate Change report released earlier by CDP, HTC continued to achieve management level (B). HTC is also committed to implementing a sustainable value chain and became a CDP Supply Chain Member at the beginning of 2023, joining the ranks of over 200 major purchasing organizations to drive environmental action through value chains. At the same time, HTC became a TCFD supporter at the end of the year, and published a TCFD independent report for the first time in 2023.
With all the outstanding innovation emerging from HTC’s business divisions as our vision of VIVERSE becomes a global reality, the Company is well placed to again play a leading role in the future of technology, and we would like to express our sincere appreciation to our shareholders for their faith in our vision.
Looking ahead, HTC will continue to innovate and focus on technology, optimize organizational resources and create value, uphold the right strategies, world-class talent, innovation and a heritage of innovation that will drive our next stage of growth. Throughout all of our operations and partnerships, HTC seeks to ensure the highest standards of environmental protection and R&D innovation, with a view to creating a better life for people. HTC strives to become a world’s leading brand, and you are welcome to give us support, encouragement and suggestions on HTC’s road to a sustainable future.
HTC
Chairwoman and CEO
Cher Wang