Meta Effectively Cancels Horizon O.S. Third-Party Headsets ⇥ roadtovr.com

Meta, in an April 2024 press release:

Today we’re taking the next step toward our vision for a more open computing platform for the metaverse. We’re opening up the operating system powering our Meta Quest devices to third-party hardware makers, giving more choice to consumers and a larger ecosystem for developers to build for. We’re working with leading global technology companies to bring this new ecosystem to life and making it even easier for developers to build apps and reach their audiences on the platform.

Ben Thompson reacting:

Motivations, of course, aren’t enough: unlike AI models, where Meta wants a competitive model, but will achieve its strategic goals as long as a closed model doesn’t win, the company does actually need to win in the metaverse by controlling the most devices (assuming, of course, that the metaverse actually becomes a thing).

The first thing to note is that pursuing an Apple-like fully-integrated model would actually be bad for Meta’s larger goals, which, as a horizontal services company, is reaching the maximum number of people possible; there is a reason that the iPhone, by far the most dominant integrated product ever, still only has about 30% marketshare worldwide. Indeed, I would pushback on Zuckerberg’s continued insistence that Apple “won” mobile: they certainly did as far as revenue and profits go, but the nature of their winning is not the sort of winning that Meta should aspire to; from a horizontal services company perspective, Android “won” because it has the most marketshare.

Ben Lang, Road to VR:

Meta specifically named Asus and Lenovo as the first partners it was working with to build new Horizon OS headsets. Asus was said to be building an “all-new performance gaming headset,” while Lenovo was purportedly working on “mixed reality devices for productivity, learning, and entertainment.”

But as we’ve now learned, neither headset is likely to see the light of day. Meta say it has frozen the third-party Horizon OS headset program.

I link to Thompson’s article not to dunk on it, but to ask the natural followup question: if an Android-like operating system licensing model is a good indication of the potential for Meta’s metaverse vision, what does its effective cancellation suggest? This and the deep personnel cuts forecast what has seemed obvious from the start: the company’s vision of the metaverse is simply not compelling.

You will notice I am leaving open a door for somebody or some company to make a truly interesting metaverse-like thing. I am skeptical it will exist, but I can see the potential. Wherever it emerges, though, I would bet against Meta itself making this stuff viable. It does not do interesting and cool new things.