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Rikard Steiber Departs HTC

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Rikard Steiber, President of Viveport, and one of the most visible HTC executives in the US, has announced he’ll be stepping down at the end of the year. This is HTC’s first high level departure since its new CEO, Yves Maitre, joined the company in September. 

Steiber has led the development of Viveport for the past four years. The $12.99/month web-based subscription platform includes Rift and Valve titles as well as over 700 apps for the HTC Vive. While Vive does not release numbers, analysts estimate Viveport has over 500,000 subscribers, creating an important source of recurring revenue for the Taiwan-based company. Effective today Bjorn Book-Larsson, HTC’s VP of Product, will be the acting head of Viveport.

Steiber told us in an email this morning that “Viveport Infinity is having incredible positive momentum with new top rated content, great product and new subscriber records daily. However, as HTC now is entering a new chapter, I have agreed with Yves (new HTC CEO) that it is a great time for me to move on and take on a new challenge after almost 4 years at HTC Vive. I will go on garden leave today until my contract ends early next year. It has been my honor to work with an incredible talented team in building Viveport into a global destination for VR experiences in +60 markets. I am especially proud of our “Infinity Subscription, the world’s first "Netflix of VR" cross platform VR subscription business.”

Steiber was previously Global Marketing Director at Google and CEO of the media company MTGx building international video on demand and esports businesses.

"Under Rikard's leadership, Viveport was developed, launched and became a global destination for VR content as well as the world's first VR subscription service. We wish him well in future endeavors and thank him for his contributions to HTC and virtual reality," said a company statement.

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