Meta plays up the investment in smart screens and watches
Several of Meta’s hardware projects have to be scrapped after the social media giant launched a big warning. “Metaverse will be the death of us,” says a former Meta employee.
11,000 people – that’s how many employees have to leave Instagram and Facebook’s parent company Meta. The company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg explains in a comment that the growth seen during the pandemic did not continue, contrary to what he and others thought.
“Unfortunately, it didn’t go as I had expected. I made a mistake in judgment and take responsibility for it,” Zuckerberg said after the mass layoff plans became known.
Tightens the budget in several areas
Meta also plans to tighten budgets for various operations within the group – and this applies, among other things, to certain parts of the company’s various hardware projects.
According to Reuters the technology giant plans to scrap the development of Portal, a smart screen that is made, among other things, for video calls.
Portal has been a bit of a grieving child for Meta. This summer, the site The Information published data suggesting that Portal may have less than one (1) percent of the global market in its segment. Now the investment goes into the grave.
Moved to ar project
The same fate also seems to await Meta’s smartwatch, which the company has been working on for a while, but has yet to launch sharply.
Could this be Meta’s upcoming Facebook watch? Photo: Meta
The engineers who until recently worked on Meta’s smart watch will now be moved to the department that develops the company’s augmented reality glasses (not to be confused with Meta Quest), writes Engadget.
Earlier this fall, Facebook and Ray Ban launched a pair of smart glasses.
Former employees upset
Meta’s mass layoff has left a bitter aftertaste with many former employees. On the forum Blind, where employees can leave reviews about employers anonymously, several people who have just lost their jobs at Meta vent their frustration, reports Business Insider.
– Metaverse will be the death of us. Mark Zuckerberg will single-handedly kill an entire company with his investment, writes a person claiming to be a senior software developer.
Drawn with huge losses
The investment in metaverse, which is often described as the Internet of tomorrow, is Meta’s big investment in the future, and a pronounced passion project for CEO Mark Zuckerberg. But the project is very costly – while the income does not outweigh the losses.
Meta’s founder Mark Zuckerberg. Photo: Noah Berger
The Reality Labs division, which develops Meta’s ar and vr technology, reported a loss of more than $10 billion in 2021. That can be contrasted with the business’s revenue of $2.27 billion in the same period, writes Realtime.
