While several Korean media outlets report that the Meta partnership broke down entirely due to a lack of “synergy” between the companies, LG denied terminating the deal. “LG Electronics continues the XR partnership with Meta forged in February, but is pacing it,” LG said in tech/LG-pumps-brakes-on-Meta-partnership-as-headsets-struggle-to-sell/2050663″>a statement to JoongAng Korean Newspaper.
Collaboration products, configured to combine Meta's horizon worlds The mixed reality platform with content and service capabilities from LG's TV business was expected to hit the market next year. The potential for on-device ai integration was also being explored, courtesy of Meta's large language models.
Adding to the confusion about what is happening with the project, Seoul Economic Daily reports that the collaboration is still ongoing, but is likely now targeting a 2027 release date. Meanwhile, several of the publications reporting that LG has moved away from Meta claim that it is instead seeking a new partnership of XR headphones with amazon that would benefit from amazon Prime's strong library of streaming content and its 200 million subscribers.
We've reached out to LG and Meta to clarify the future of the current headphone project.
Meta's Reality Labs program has reportedly lost $1 billion every month since June 2022.
This potential relationship breakdown comes as Meta struggles to prevent its AR and VR businesses from hemorrhaging money, with GameIndustry.biz inform last month that Reality Labs has burned through $1 billion every month since June 2022. However, Meta doesn't seem deterred, announcing that it expects these losses to increase “significantly” year over year due to “continued product development efforts.” ” of the company. and our investments to further scale our ecosystem.”
Meanwhile, the broader VR/AR products industry is also struggling amid declining consumer interest. Sony has supposedly stopped production of its PSVR 2 headsets Due to a buildup of unsold inventory and slow adoption of Apple's Vision Pro headphones, some Apple stores have been selling as few as two units per week. according Bloomberg.
