By Josh Ye
HONG KONG (Reuters) -Tencent Holdings said on Thursday it was making some personnel adjustments after a media report said that the Chinese tech company was laying off staff in its recently formed “extended reality” (XR) business.
Chinese tech outlet 36Kr reported on Thursday, citing unnamed sources, that Tencent had notified the unit’s more than 300 staff that they would be given two months to find new internal or external opportunities and that the unit would be disbanded.
Tencent, Asia’s biggest internet company, told Reuters that it was untrue that it planned to disband the business. It said it was making adjustments to some business teams as its development plans for hardware had changed.
The company formed the unit in June last year, with the aim of building up a business that would include software and hardware and spearhead Tencent’s bet on the metaverse concept of virtual worlds.
It also marked a rare foray into hardware for Tencent, which is mostly known for its software such as its range of games as well as social media applications.
Extended reality is a term that refers to immersive technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality, which considered as the building blocks of the metaverse.
The metaverse became the new buzz word for investors and tech companies in 2021 after Mark Zuckerberg changed Facebook’s name to Meta Platforms and said he would devote the company’s future to building a metaverse.
(Reporting by Josh Ye; Writing by Brenda Goh; editing by Jason Neely and Jane Merriman)
