In a nutshell: With Facebook changing its corporate name to Meta and so much focus being placed on the future of virtual reality, one might imagine that more people bought VR headsets this year. The worrying reality for the social media giant is that the opposite happened: shipments slumped more than 12% year-over-year in 2022.
Despite facing pushback from consumers and industry figures, Meta continues to double down on its metaverse ambitions. Reality Labs, the division responsible for this unit, has lost around $16 billion since the start of last year, all while Facebook’s net income falls as advertisers reel in their spending in these times of economic turmoil.
But could Mark Zuckerberg’s obsessive belief in the metaverse be his downfall? Things aren’t looking good. A shared reality that is virtual needs people your can purchase VR headsets, needless to say, however their product sales have actually dropped 2% (YoY) in america this current year to $1.1 billion. It’s a whole lot worse development in the scale that is global where shipments are down 12% YoY to 9.6 million, according to data shared with CNBC by research firm NPD Group.
The figures are unlikely to be a concern for Zuckerberg. The CEO says that investment in the metaverse today might not reap any rewards for another decade, at which point the reality that is virtual may potentially begin making a huge selection of billions, if you don’t trillions, of bucks.
Few individuals share Zuck’s belief that the VR room will end up the internet that is new though. One analyst recently predicted that most business that is metaverse have shuttered by 2025. Elsewhere, a study of very nearly 10,000 adolescents early in the day this showed half were uninterested in the metaverse, and we’ve even heard of some
Then staff who share this skepticism.(* year) there’s John Carmack. The legendary programmer, who had been at Facebook/Meta since it acquired Oculus in 2014, expressed disappointment in the metaverse’s progress in October. He left the company this month, calling Meta inefficient, constantly self-sabotaging, and ill-prepared for the competition that is inevitable will ultimately arrive.
But it is not all news that is bad Meta. Like so many industries, VR headsets saw a boom in sales year—revenue that is last the usa doubled from about $530 million in 2020, based on NPD—thanks partly to all or any the offers therefore the pandemic, so a decline actually completely unanticipated. And Meta’s Oculus Quest 2 will continue to dominate the* that is( with a nearly 50% user share. Whether that will placate nervous* that are( investors is yet another matter.
