HTC files Vive Cosmos trademark

HTC may finally be rolling out its Vive Focus standalone headset to businesses this month, but a new trademark filing has us wondering what else the company is working on.

The Taiwanese smartphone maker recently filed a trademark at the EUIPO (first spotted by Dutch site Mobielkopen) for something called ‘Vive Cosmos’. There’s no exact description of what the name refers to, but the listing does state it’s related to a ‘head mounted display for computer simulated reality’ amongst other things like ‘eye pieces for head mounted displays’ and ‘handheld controllers for use in computer simulated reality environment’. That all sounds like VR to us.

These terms do have us wondering if the trademark might be referring to a new VR headset from HTC such as a successor to the Vive Pro or perhaps a new name for the Vive Focus once it gets those promising six degrees of freedom (6DOF) controllers we saw earlier this month. This is complete speculation on our part but we wonder if the company could be planning a new PC-based Vive that takes advantage of HTC’s new inside-out tracking tech, much like the newly rumored Oculus Rift S. Or maybe it’s just something that will accommodate Valve’s new SteamVR tech like the Knuckles controllers.

Interestingly the trademark also notes that the listing is related to ‘computer peripherals for mobile devices for remotely accessing and transmitting data’, which suggests that whatever this new product is it could be linked to wireless VR. Perhaps a new Vive could come with the tech from HTC’s recently released Vive wireless adapter (which some Ryzen owners are having to return) embedded?

Either way, the listing’s appearance online has us hoping that whatever HTC’s planning will be showing up in the New Year. The company used CES 2018 to announce the Vive Pro headset, so perhaps we could see something there.