Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has stated that he will not leave the firm despite the fact that it has lost billions of dollars in investments.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg is upbeat about the project despite the fact that the metaverse is consuming the company’s billions since “someone needs to construct that.”
Zuckerberg was asked his thoughts on whether the internet giant’s metaverse play was still sustainable given its expense and the issues presented about the platform while participating virtually in an interview at the DealBook Summit on November 30 in New York. He responded:
“I think things look very different on a ten-year time horizon than the zone that we’re in for the next few years […] I’m still completely optimistic about all the things that we’ve been optimistic about.”
He continued by saying that “seeing things through” over the long term required “powering through” any residual doubts about the project’s ultimate viability.
The worst quarterly loss in Reality Labs’ history, which is responsible for creating the metaverse, was revealed in Meta’s most recent earnings report, which was released on October 26. In 2022, the virtual reality project of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, has already lost $9.44 billion, creeping closer to the over $10 billion in losses announced in 2021.
Zuckerberg downplayed the cost during the earnings call for that quarter, referring to the company’s virtual world (or “metaverse”) as the “next computing platform.” Then he confirmed his position at DealBook:
“We’re not going to be here in the 2030s communicating and using computing devices that are exactly the same as what we have today, and someone has to build that and invest in it and believe in it.”
CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that the goals had come at a cost and that Meta let off 11,000 staff on November 9. The business had “planned out large investments,” including in hardware to support its metaverse.
He claims that in 2021, when the COVID-19 outbreak was at its worst, the company “thought that the economy and the business were going to go in in a certain direction” based on positive indicators relating to e-commerce businesses during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. “Obviously it hasn’t turned out that way,” he added.
The CEO of the company stated that “Our kind of operational focus over the next few years is going to be on efficiency and discipline and rigor and kind of just operating in a much tighter environment.”
Although Zuckerberg has said that the company will continue to give its flagship social media platforms priority with 80% of its resources “for quite some time,” Meta appears committed to building its metaverse.
He stated that Reality Labs would receive “less than 20%” of the available funds up until “the Metaverse becomes a larger phenomenon.
The virtual reality (VR) headsets produced by Reality Labs, according to Zuckerberg, account for 40% of the 20% investment in the company, while “half or more” of the remaining funds are being used to create “the long-term most significant form factor […] Normal-looking glasses that can place holograms in the world.”
Zuck bites an apple
Additionally, Zuckerberg made fun of Apple, a rival in the IT sector, for its rigid App Store policies that have stifled the development of bitcoin trading platforms and non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces.
The idea that Apple is the lead company attempting to have total control over which apps are loaded on a user’s device is neither acceptable nor sustainable, in my opinion.
Other operating systems, such as Windows and Android, are not as constrained, he said, and even allow sideloading and alternate program stores.
He said that he hoped that future metaverse platforms would be just as receptive to sideloading as Meta is on its existing VR and upcoming AR units.
“I do think it is it is problematic for one company to be able to control what kind of app experiences get on the device.”
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