PVRTC (PowerVR Texture Compression) is a proprietary lossy texture compression format developed by Imagination Technologies. It is primarily used in mobile devices, specifically those utilizing PowerVR GPUs, which were the standard graphics hardware in Apple's iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch series for many generations. Unlike standard image formats like JPEG or PNG, PVRTC is designed to be decompressed directly by the graphics hardware in real-time. This significantly reduces memory bandwidth and storage requirements for high-resolution textures in mobile games and 3D applications. The format supports both 2-bit and 4-bit per pixel modes, allowing developers to balance image quality against memory constraints. Because it is a hardware-specific format, it is often stored within container files like .pvr or .ktx. PVRTC requires textures to be square and have dimensions that are powers of two (e.g., 512x512), which is a specific constraint compared to more modern formats like ASTC or ETC2. It remains a critical legacy standard for older iOS devices and specific embedded systems that rely on PowerVR architecture.