Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse Dream Fails: Meta’s VR Market Decline

Novina Putri Bestari, CNBC Indonesia

Tech

Wednesday, 12/20/2023 21:00 WIB

Photo: META CEO Mark Zuckerberg injured his leg while practicing mixed martial arts (MMA). (Instagram @zuck)

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Mark Zuckerberg’s big dream about the Metaverse has failed. The industrial ecosystem does not show positive progress.

Zuckerberg is known to have invested heavily in the Metaverse world. In fact, he changed his company name from Facebook to Meta as a sign of his entry into the virtual world.

Unfortunately, in the two years since changing its name to Meta, the market for Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) headsets supporting Metaverse has dropped drastically. Research company Circana noted that this year’s decline was greater than in 2022.

Last year the decline in devices was 2% to US$1.1 billion (Rp. 17 trillion). Meanwhile, in 2023 it will fall by almost 40% to US$664 million (Rp. 10.3 trillion), quoted from CNBC InternationalWednesday (20/12/2023).

Within Meta itself, Metaverse efforts are also stuck. The Reality Labs unit, which develops VR and AR, lost US$3.7 billion (Rp. 57.4 trillion) in the third quarter on sales of US$210 million (Rp. 3.2 trillion)

Since the beginning of 2022 or after changing its name to Meta, Reality Labs has lost a total of US$ 25 billion or around Rp. 338 trillion.

CNBC International said Meta refused to comment on this matter. However, referring to the blog post from Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth about Metaverse.

Bosworth, who also runs Reality Labs, said AI and the Metaverse within the company are long-term bets. He also admitted that betting was not easy and not cheap.

“Making a long-term bet on a new technology is not easy. There is no guarantee of success, and it is not cheap. It is also one of the most valuable things for technology companies to do, and the single most relevant way in the long term,” he explained.

Meta is one of the leaders in the VR market. The company is known to have released the Quest brand, including version 3 which was launched last October.

Apart from Meta, there is also Sony, which launched the PlayStation VR2 headset earlier this year. However, Sony has not won many buyers.

(npb/npb)

2023-12-20 14:00:00
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