HTC sold 15,000 Vive VR kits in 10 minutes

HTC received 15,000 bookings for the Vive virtual reality kit within 10 minutes of releasing the product for pre-orders. The Vive is going to start shipping on 5 April 2016.

Pre-orders for the HTC virtual reality kit started on Monday (29 February) at 3pm GMT in 24 countries, including the US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Taiwan, China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and in less than 10 minutes it sold 15,000 kits online, selling at a rate of 25 headsets per second, HTC executive Shen Ye shared in a Twitter post.

The VR kit, developed in partnership with video game studio Valve, is priced at $799 in the US, £689 in the UK and €899 in Europe, excluding tax and shipping cost. Going by the numbers, the Taiwanese smartphone maker earned $12m (£8.5m) with the pre-order sale.

The VR kit includes a headset with wireless controllers, a front-facing camera, two base stations, a headstrap, a visual system, ear buds and other Vive accessories. The gear is also bundled with two full-fledged VR games, namely Job Simulator: The 2050 Archives by Owlchemy Labs and Fantastic Contraption by Northway Games and Radial Games.

HTC announced the details and pre-order date for the VR headset early in February at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. The firm is struggling against smartphone mammoths for market share but is grabbing attention in the VR space, competing against Facebook-owned Oculus Rift, Playstation VR and Google, even though it is priced higher than $600 VR headset of Oculus Rift.

Another HTC rival in the VR space, Google launched its virtual reality products, namely the Cardboard VR viewer, Goggle Tech C1-Glass VR Viewer and Mattel View-Master VR Starter Pac, on its Play Store.