Though facing setbacks in the smartphone market, the Taiwanese company HTC has gained public attention again with virtual reality. And the company now plans to build over 10,000 VR experience sites in mainland China by the end of 2016.

Due to its previous bad performance in the smartphone market, which led to the decline of its share price, HTC's chairman Cher Wang once had to kowtow to shareholders to apologize. However, with the excellent sales of its new VR product HTC Vive, the company has regained public attention and it now plans to shift its focus to the VR sector.

Taiwan-based HTC is making great efforts to promote its VR concept. To better introduce its product into the Chinese mainland market, HTC also contacted retailers Suning and Gome for strategic cooperation deals. Relying on the influence of those two companies, HTC expects to attract more consumers to purchase HTC Vive devices, which are priced at more than RMB8000.

Earlier this month, HTC established the Virtual Reality Venture Capital Alliance with 28 venture capital firms. In April 2016, HTC initiated the Asia Pacific Virtual Reality Alliance. And now with its retail push, the company is eyeing mass consumption of its very real virtual reality product.

Financial details of the Gome and Suning deals have not yet been released by HTC.