On May 24, 2024, at the Viva Technology exhibition held at the Porte de Versailles Exhibition Center in Paris, France, a visitor wore a virtual reality headset Meta Quest to participate in the immersive experience stage.
Chesnot | Getty Images
Yuan Ambitious plans to develop Metaverse still cost the company billions of dollars per season.
Meta’s Reality Labs unit, which provides augmented reality and virtual reality technology, recorded an operating loss of $4.48 billion as part of the company’s second-quarter earnings report on Wednesday. Analysts polled by StreetAccount expected losses of $4.55 billion.
The Reality Labs unit has accumulated losses of about $50 billion since the end of 2020, underscoring Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s massive investments in hardware and software that underpin what he calls the next era of personal computing.
Reality Labs’ revenue mainly comes from the company’s Quest series VR headsets and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, with revenue of US$353 million, an increase of 28% from US$276 million in the same period last year. Analysts expect the unit to bring in $371 million in revenue.
In September, Meta launched the Quest 3 VR headset, starting at $499. A few months later, Apple released the Vision Pro VR and AR headset, which starts at $3,500. In June, CNBC reported apple The Vision Pro headphones are now available in China, with retail prices starting at 29,999 yuan ($4,128).
With the VR market still in its infancy, Meta has been heavily promoting the smart glasses it developed with Ray-Ban. Zuckerberg pointed out that advances in artificial intelligence and related large-scale language models are improving the capabilities of smart glasses.
In early July, Francesco Milleri, CEO of EssilorLuxottica, the parent company of Ray-Ban, said: Tell Analysts said Meta plans to become a shareholder in the European eyewear maker, expanding the partnership between the two companies that dates back to 2020.
Meta’s second-generation smart glasses will be available in October, starting at $299. Zuckerberg said during an earnings call with analysts in April that “there could be a meaningful market for stylish artificial intelligence glasses without a display.”