How Android has gone from being a rising star to becoming the world's largest mobile operating system is undoubtedly the key. At that time, iOS had already taken the lead, relying on the inclusion of heroes from all walks of life, Android only took a few years to achieve the laggard.
The success of Android now seems to have inspired Meta, which is interested in making a career in the VR/AR track. A few days ago, Meta released a blog post titled "A New Era of Mixed Reality", and announced that the Quest software platform was renamed "Meta Horizon OS", and allowed third-party companies to design more headsets based on Meta Horizon OS.
At present, Lenovo, Asus, LG, and Microsoft have all confirmed that they will be the first partners of Meta Horizon OS. Among them, ASUS's ROG brand announced that it will build a "high-performance gaming headset" based on Meta Horizon OS, while Lenovo will launch a series of headsets for "productivity, learning, and entertainment".
Meta said in this blog post, "We are taking the next step towards our vision of building a more open computing platform for the metaverse." We're opening up the operating systems that power Meta Quest devices to third-party hardware manufacturers, giving consumers more choice and a larger ecosystem for developers. We're partnering with the world's leading tech companies to bring this new ecosystem to life, making it easier for developers to build apps and reach a wider audience. ”
In this regard, Zuckerberg, the founder of Meta, also said that "in every era of computer technology, there are always open and closed models". Visvion Pro uses visionOS to maintain Apple's usual closed strategy, and it is only natural for Meta, as a giant in the VR/AR track, to choose to stand on the open side. In Zuckerberg's view, opening up Meta Horizon OS to third-party vendors basically reproduces the market pattern of Android and iOS competition in the smartphone industry. And this time, Meta is going to play the role of Google back then.
It's worth mentioning that Google actually has its own Android XR, but Meta has refused to work with Google late last year to bring Android XR to the Quest headset. In fact, the reason why Meta wants to start anew is also very simple, after all, they have suffered losses in this field. Although Meta, which started as a social software, has been established for 20 years and spans the PC Internet and mobile Internet, Meta has maintained a "sojourn" status for a long time in the absence of both hardware products and operating systems.
Previously, in the PC Internet era, the open Web ecology allowed Meta to take a free ride with Windows, but in the mobile Internet era where the "walled garden" model was popular, Meta's defects in being controlled by others were exposed. In iOS 14, which launched in the fall of 2020, Apple introduced the "App Tracking Transparency" feature, which requires apps to explicitly ask for the user's permission before accessing the user's IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) on their device.
So much so that at that time, Meta had to warn investors on its official blog that "the update to iOS 14 may greatly weaken the efficiency of the company's targeted advertising service Audience Network, and even cause advertising on iOS 14 to be meaningless in the future." ”
Two years later, in 2022, Meta CFO Dave Wehner bluntly said that this feature of iOS will cause the company to lose $10 billion in advertising revenue every year. And this is also believed by the outside world to be a key factor in Meta's market value evaporating by $200 billion that year. After all, Meta has little bargaining power when it comes to the owners of the operating system.
After learning the hard way, Meta created VROS, an open-source Android-based operating system, for its Quest headset, and Meta Horizon OS was built on the former. As for why Meta doesn't learn from Apple and engage in a closed ecosystem, the answer is that they have more than enough to do.
Of course, for Meta, this is also a non-war crime. At that time, Apple's iOS was an instant hit, relying on the fact that the smartphone represented by the iPhone did take over the personal computer and became a new generation of general-purpose computing devices.
Intelligent mobile communication devices will undoubtedly have an extraordinary influence on human society, which is why the iPhone has swept the world since its inception. However, whether Meta's Quest headset can be called a "next-generation general-purpose computing device" has not yet won the consensus of the public, and even in the eyes of quite a few people, the VR headset is still just a large toy, and its status is equivalent to Sony PS, Microsoft Xbox, and other home game consoles.
Meta's Quest 2 has accumulated sales of more than 20 million units, relying on the ultra-low price of $299, which has opened the door to the overseas consumer market, but has also basically squeezed out the potential of the overseas market. After all, when VR products temporarily compromise solutions to problems such as field of view, clarity, motion sickness, etc., spending hundreds of dollars to buy a VR device with a mediocre experience, a single purpose, a lack of content, and poor circulation, unless you are really a geek, most people will often be discouraged.
Originally, Meta hoped to rely on the concept of the metaverse to help the Quest headset take off, but unfortunately, the vision of the metaverse is obviously not ambitious, and with the current level of technology, whether it is 3D rendering, communication, or artificial intelligence, it is a very cost-effective thing to build an "oasis" similar to "Ready Player One".
In the case that the concept of the metaverse is temporarily ignored, it is naturally unrealistic for Meta to rely solely on itself to build a VR/AR-oriented operating system.
Emulating Google's operation on Android is actually a strategy that Meta has to do as a last resort. After all, with the VR technology they have accumulated over the past decade or so, especially eye, face, hand and body tracking, spatial positioning technology, and a complete set of APIs, Meta Horizon OS is still very attractive to manufacturers who want to develop VR headsets today. Therefore, it may not be impossible for Meta to become the leader of the VR headset camp in the future.