The XR industry ushered in the "Android moment": Meta opened the Quest operating system and the wave of spatial computing began

The XR industry ushered in an "Android moment" in the ecological sense.

Recently, Meta announced that it is opening up the operating system of Meta Quest devices to third-party hardware manufacturers, expanding the range of hardware developers can build apps on.

Meta Horizon OS is the culmination of a decade of Meta's efforts to build the next generation of computing platforms. To develop stand-alone headsets, Meta has developed technologies such as built-in tracking, and eye, face, hand, and body tracking technologies to enable a more natural interaction system and social presence.

Therefore, Meta's action was interpreted by the market as the giant's competition in the field of headsets has finally come to the field of content ecology.

"The ultimate popularity of any technology product is because of the ecology, not because of the price. The biggest challenge facing the XR industry is the lack of high-quality ecological content. In recent years, with the further reduction of prices, headsets, mobile phones, and tablets have become the same category of personal devices, and they will inevitably begin to compete with each other for the time of users. Qi Yingnan, deputy director of Counterpoint, said in an interview with the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that in this context, if XR equipment does not have good content and killer applications, it is difficult to firmly occupy consumers' time, and the cultivation of consumption habits is impossible.

图片来源：IC photo

生态初成

Meta Horizon OS is the MR operating system currently running on Meta Quest, and now Meta has chosen to open it up for more third-party hardware developers.

Globally, Meta Horizon OS is one of the most advanced MR operating systems, developed on the basis of AOSP, and Meta has been working in this field for 10 years. The system is equipped with leading Inside-Out self-tracking technology, gesture tracking, full-color perspective, scene understanding, spatial anchoring, etc., and also covers a complete set of software solutions including eye/face tracking, Avatar, etc.

When asked why Meta Horizon OS is being opened, Zuckerberg said that in the PC era, the open model wins. People can do more things, such as installing mods and getting more diverse hardware and software. Therefore, Meta wants to use the open model to define the next generation of computing, and the metaverse and headsets are essential. When it opens, more companies can build more fun things on top of it.

In addition, the app store built by Meta has also begun to bear fruit, according to statistics from Wellsenn XR, as of 2023, there are 559 content apps on the Meta Quest content platform, and 5,247 content on the third-party platform SideQuest based on Quest. For comparison, Pico has the second largest content app in the global market with 516 apps.

At the same time as announcing the opening of the ecosystem, Lenovo Group also became one of the first partners to support Meta Horizon OS, and reached a partnership by supporting a large hardware ecosystem that runs on Meta Horizon OS, and Lenovo said it will use its past experience co-designing the Oculus Rift S with Meta, as well as its engineering expertise, to develop mixed reality devices for productivity, learning, and entertainment.

The giant's choice

It is worth noting that the deeper significance behind Meta's ecological opening is that it basically reproduces the market pattern of Android and iOS competition in the smartphone industry.

On the one hand, Meta is now the leading XR manufacturer in the market, with more than 20 million shipments of Meta Quest series products, and Reality Labs, the division behind its VR/AR, has invested a lot of money in this regard, and the annual loss of the department in 2023 has reached $16.12 billion.

On the other hand, consumer interest in Apple's headset Vision Pro is waning since its launch at the beginning of the year, and Apple has had to step up its marketing on its online homepage, with a big promotion for the Vision Pro at the top of the site. Ming-Chi Kuo also said a few days ago that Apple has lowered the order for Vision Pro to 400,000 to 450,000 units this year, far lower than the previous market consensus expectation of 700,000 to 800,000 units. Apple's sharp cuts before it is ready to bring this new product to more markets mean that demand in the U.S. market has fallen sharply, more than previously expected.

In this context, Meta's ecological opening this time also has more meaning of "declaring war" on Apple.

"In every era of computer technology, there are always open and closed models. In a video released on April 23, Zuckerberg said, "When it comes to phones, Apple's closed mode has basically won." The phone is tightly controlled by the manufacturer, and the user is locked into what Apple allows the user to do. But it doesn't have to be that way. ”

After the opening of Meta Horizon OS, many start-ups will be able to quickly catch up with Meta Quest and even Vision Pro with the software algorithms that Meta has accumulated and greatly reduce the gap between Meta Quest and even Vision Pro, and the industry will enter a melee stage.

Startup opportunities

Pulling back to the domestic market, some startups in the field of headset hardware are also accelerating the creation of a content ecosystem. Recently, Rokid also officially released a new generation of AR Lite spatial computing suite, aiming to accelerate the full popularization of spatial computing in the domestic market.

"Spatial computing has the opportunity to be the next computing platform. Lightweight AR is a key terminal entrance in the field of spatial computing, and is expected to detonate the consumer market. Under spatial computing technology, the entire industry is facing huge opportunities, and there is also a common problem, that is, how to make users accept that they need a spatial computing product. This requires the emergence of innovative terminals that detonate the market, and the accelerated maturity of the industry ecology. Zhu Mingming, founder and CEO of Rokid, said in an exclusive interview with the 21st Century Business Herald reporter at the release site.

In Zhu Mingming's view, the current stage of XR (extended reality) technology development is quite similar to the period before the smartphone market exploded in 2007. At that time, many companies such as Nokia, BlackBerry, Motorola, etc., have launched a variety of innovative mobile phone products, from flip phones to handwritten mobile phones, to PLAM, etc., and the market is showing a situation of hundreds of schools of thought. Today, the XR field is also in such a stage of diversified exploration, and tech giants, including Apple, are actively looking for and defining their own XR product paths.

"In such an environment, Rokid is also one of the few countercyclical companies. Zhu Mingming said frankly. Over the past three years, Rokid has grown by more than 100% per year on average, including the worst year in 2023. In the first quarter of 2024, Rokid's performance increased by 150% year-on-year, and this year will achieve a full-year growth of more than 100% overall. In the AR industry, the growth rate will remain more than 50% or even 100% in the next 10 to 20 years.

However, it cannot be ignored that the current market penetration rate of AR devices is still quite limited. "At present, the market size of AR devices is only about one million to two million people, and if the industry wants to produce disruptive changes, it will need to reach at least 10 million. Zhu Mingming said frankly.

Zhu Mingming told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that the next generation of technology products will form a perfect triangle in terms of computing power, presentation power and portability, which is a deterministic trend. However, the key problem at the moment is that the portability of the device has not yet reached the desired state and needs more time to develop.

"Although the current performance of AR devices has been very powerful, even surpassing desktop computing, the problem of unfriendly use of fragmented scenes caused by insufficient portability still exists. At present, users still need a relatively dedicated scene to use AR devices, and they need to sit down, turn on the device, and schedule a certain amount of time to use it. This limits the scope and convenience of the product. Zhu Mingming said.

Talking about the revenue structure, he said that from the latest situation, by 2023, Rokid's ToC end revenue has been more than 2 times that of the ToB side, close to 3 times, and Rokid's shipment target in 2024 is set at 300,000~500,000 units. The ToB end is used in industry and heavy industry, with a market share of about 60%, especially in the fields of energy, heavy machinery, chemical industry and medical care, of which energy and machinery are the main market share, and although the ToC business exceeded ToB in sales last year, ToB business is still the main source of profit from the perspective of profit contribution.

For more information, please download the 21 Finance APP