Meta recently posted very strong quarterly numbers with Zuckerberg assuring that the company will stay on course as far as its metaverse focus goes.

After a lackluster performance and plummeting stock prices in 2022, Meta posted a surprisingly impressive performance in the first quarter of 2023 with the company once again growing its revenues after facing three successive disappointing quarters. The company also announced that its social media platform, Facebook, added 37 million new users year-over-year.

Following the announcement, Meta’s stock value rose 10% within hours with the stock price now up 164% over its November 2022 low.

Meta Isn’t Pivoting from the Metaverse

In spite of recent reports that the company was pivoting away from the metaverse and focusing its efforts on its ad business and moving towards AI, the company says it is still staying the course of its metaverse vision.

In spite of its widely publicized losses in its metaverse business, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg assured via a Facebook post that the company isn’t making a U-turn into AI yet and that he sees Artificial Intelligence as complementing the metaverse.

In the Facebook post, Zuckerberg stated that the “narrative” emerging that Meta is pivoting from its metaverse vision is “not accurate” and that the company is “focusing on AI and the metaverse” and will continue along that course.

Meta doesn’t expect its Reality Labs division to make money yet and investors have been heavily critical of the company’s massive investments in the loss-making metaverse. Zuckerberg’s decision to pour investments into AI might go some way in placating worried investors. Wall Street certainly responded positively with the company’s stock value rising 10%. However, the fact remains that Meta’s metaverse bet is still hemorrhaging lots of money, over $10 billion annually.

This quarter, Reality Labs still lost close to $4 billion. In the whole of 2022, the division lost $13.7 billion. However, Zuckerberg pointed out that AR and VR technologies are closely interlinked with Artificial Intelligence.

In his Facebook post, Zuckerberg stated that Meta’s vision for Augmented Reality glasses involved the development of an AI-centric operating system that will form “the basis for the next generation of computing.”

On the metaverse front, Zuckerberg revealed in the call that up to half of its Quest active users are now spending more than one hour per day on their headsets.

Meta didn’t disclose the number of active daily users for its Quest headsets. Zuckerberg describes the development of the metaverse as a “long-term project” and that the rationale for its development “remains the same” and Meta remains committed to it.

Meta Quest 3 On Course for 2023 Launch

During the earnings call, Zuckerberg also reaffirmed that the “next-generation Quest headset”, which is widely assumed to be the Meta Quest 3, was still on course for a release later in the year.

Meta Quest 3 Stinson Prototype
Meta Quest 3 Stinson Prototype

Zuckerberg announced the following new virtual reality milestones for the company: –

  • Over 1 billion Meta Avatars have been created so far.
  • The number of Quest apps posting at least $25 million in revenues has doubled since 2022.
  • Over half of the active daily users are spending more than one hour on their headsets

Although Zuckerberg did not reveal the number of daily active users on the company’s Quest headsets, the Wall Street Journal reported that the company had 6.37 million monthly users as of October 2022.

Zuckerberg wrote that he was excited to showcase all the “improvements and new technology” that the company has developed so far in its next Quest headset while promising that the headset’s price point “will be accessible for lots of people.”

A report in March, from an inside source, claimed that Meta Quest 3 would be slightly more expensive than Meta Quest 2 which costs $400. Meta CTO has also hinted that the current highly successful Meta Quest 2 will stay in the market for a bit longer which suggests that the current Quest headset won’t be entirely replaced by the upcoming Meta Quest 3 headset.

https://virtualrealitytimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Meta-Quest-3-Schematics-600x306.pnghttps://virtualrealitytimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Meta-Quest-3-Schematics-150x90.pngRob GrantBusinessMetaMeta recently posted very strong quarterly numbers with Zuckerberg assuring that the company will stay on course as far as its metaverse focus goes. After a lackluster performance and plummeting stock prices in 2022, Meta posted a surprisingly impressive performance in the first quarter of 2023 with the company once...VR, Oculus Rift, and Metaverse News - Cryptocurrency, Adult, Sex, Porn, XXX