His company has seen better days, yet Mark Zuckerberg continues to invest aggressively in VR and AR.
Yesterday, Meta Platforms presented the results of the first quarter of 2022. The results were mixed: while sales were lower than analysts predicted, Meta was able to increase the daily Facebook user numbers again. The stock market reacted positively and caused the value of the share to rise by more than 15 percent after the stock market.
The Metaverse business, as expected, delivered sobering results: spending on the VR and AR department of Reality Labs was just barely in the first quarter three billion US dollarshowever, the revenue is only $700 Million.
Zuckerberg wants to reduce investment
Mark Zuckerberg accepts this incredible gap and promises even greater investments – at least “over a certain period of time”. According to a leak, almost 18,000 out of 78,000 employees are to work on VR and AR technologies. These are 23% of the workforce.
Metas financial results at a glance. The period between the fourth quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of 2022 is shown. I have highlighted the reality Labs figures. / Screenshot: MIXED
Probably to reassure investors, Zuckerberg announced austerity measures. “Given the current business growth, we are now planning to slow down the pace of some of our investments,” said Metas CEO.
At another point, Zuckerberg said that it is possible that “continued macroeconomic or business uncertainty could force us to weigh in favor of more short-term financial goals”.
Meta Quest 2: Unabated demand
As in the previous quarter, Reality Labs’ sales of almost $ 700 million were generated mainly by sales of Meta Quest 2, as confirmed by Chief Financial Officer Dave Wehner.
It is noteworthy that the VR glasses apparently sold almost as well in the spring as after the launch and the first Christmas business in 2020. At that time, Meta recorded sales of 717 million US dollars. That the Demand still continues after one and a half years, may vote positively.
On the software side, Zuckerberg went into Horizon. Here the focus should next be on the Expansion of the community and in the course of the year, a web version of the in-house Metaverse platform will be released. Horizon fans should be able to interact with each other “on any device or platform”.
XR breakthrough: Postponed to next decade?
However, the best way to experience Horizon remains virtual reality and augmented reality. Zuckerberg is announcing an update for Meta Quest 2 that will integrate Horizon into the VR glasses’ launch environment and thus make it more accessible. This is Horizon Home.
The ultimate goal of the Metaverse strategy is the monetization of digital content created by users and creators. “We expect that we will be significantly better at monetization than others in this area,” Zuckerberg said.
As for the hardware, the CEO let it be seen, Meta plans two to three generations into the future and has built up a separate team for each product, which explains the enormous expenditure on research and development. “But only when these products really hit the market, gain traction and the market becomes big, they will contribute a large amount to the company’s revenue and profit,” Zuckerberg said.
Until then, however, is far, very far. “We are laying the foundation for exciting 30swhen this technology has become more established as the primary computing platform.“
