Mark Zuckerberg believes that Apple and his company are in a “very deep philosophical competition” to build the metaverse, suggesting that the two tech giants are ready to clash on the sale of hardware for augmented and virtual reality.
Meta’s CEO told employees earlier this month that they were competing with Apple to determine “which direction the internet should go,” according to a recording of his remarks during an internal hands-free meeting obtained by Apple. the edge. He said Meta would position itself as the more open and affordable alternative to Apple, which is expected to announce its first AR headsets later this year.
“This is a competition of philosophies and ideas, where they believe that by doing everything themselves and by integrating closely, they build a better experience for the consumer,” Zuckerberg said of the disturbing rivalry. “And we believe that there is much to be done in specialization between different companies, and [that] It will allow a much larger ecosystem to exist.”
Since changing the company name from Facebook to Meta, Zuckerberg has been pushing the concept of interoperability for the metaverse, or what he sees as the next big chapter in computing after mobile phones. meta recently helped raise the Metaverse Open Standards Group with Microsoft, Epic Games and others. The idea is to stimulate the creation of open protocols that allow people to easily move through future immersive 3D worlds with their virtual goods.
Apple is absent from the group, which Zuckerberg called unsurprising in his comments to employees. He explained how Apple’s approach of building tightly controlled hardware and software had worked well with the iPhone, but that for the metaverse, “it’s not very clear up front whether an open or closed ecosystem is going to be better.”
While CEO Tim Cook has been honest about the interest of the company In AR as a category, Apple has kept quiet about its unannounced hardware plans. Still, all signs point to the imminent launch of a high-end headset that blurs the full immersion of virtual reality with augmented reality experiences that overlay the real world. Meta plans to launch a similar type of headset later this yearcodenamed Cambria, and is also preparing his first real pair of AR glasses.
If virtual reality and augmented reality take off as Zuckerberg hopes, it seems he wants to position Meta as the Android of Apple’s iOS. There’s already a parallel to draw: Meta’s Quest headset already allows sideloading of apps that aren’t approved by Meta’s VR app store, similar to how Google’s Android allows sideloading. And even if it’s just increased Quest price by $100Meta hardware is still mostly sold at a loss or at break-even.
Apple and Meta have never really seen eye to eye. The former is currently costing the latter billions of dollars a year in lost ad revenue on iOS, thanks to its ad asking people if they want a third-party app to track them to show ads. Zuckerberg’s comments suggest that even as he tries to invent a way out of Apple’s grip on mobile devices, the two tech giants are going to be battling it out for years to come.
Below is a lightly edited transcript of Zuckerberg’s June 30 response to a Meta employee’s question about metaverse competition with Apple:
Employee question: Apple is absent from the standards of the metaverse and is putting out its own AR glasses. How does that affect Oculus and our ecosystem? Thanks.
Mark Zuckerberg: I think it’s pretty clear that Apple will be a competitor to us, not only as a product but also philosophically. We are approaching this in an open way and trying to build a more open ecosystem. We’re trying to make more things interoperable with Android. We are trying to develop the metaverse so that you can take your virtual goods from one world to another. We created the Metaverse Open Standards Group with a bunch of other people you just mentioned, and Apple didn’t join. But I don’t think it’s a surprise. Apple, for a few generations of computing, has been the closed provider of computing.
This is a competition of philosophies and ideas, where they believe that by doing everything themselves and closely integrating, they build a better experience for the consumer. And we believe that there is much to be done in specialization between different companies, and [that] It will allow a much larger ecosystem to exist.
One of the things that I think is interesting is that it’s not very clear from the start whether an open or closed ecosystem is going to be better. If you look back at PCs, Windows was clearly the one with a lot more scale and it became the default and the norm that people used. And Mac did well, but I think PC and Windows were, I think, the main ecosystem in that environment.
On mobile, I’d say it’s more the other way around. There are more Android devices than iOS devices, but I think in developed countries and places like the US or Western Europe they are high-end, [and] A lot of the culture makers and developers, I think that leans a little bit more towards iPhone and iOS. So I would say that in mobile devices, Apple has really carved out a good position for themselves, and that’s why they’re the most valuable company in the world, or maybe one of the two most valuable companies in the world.
But I just don’t think the future is written here yet for the metaverse. And I think part of our job is that we’re going to continue the leading research and push this all the way down the stack. We are doing virtual reality. We are doing AR. We basically deliver our devices at cost or with a small subsidy, or a little more than cost in some cases. But the bottom line is that our business is not primarily based on getting a premium for devices. We want as many people as possible to interact. Part of that is for it to be an open ecosystem that is interoperable.
Our North Star is can we get a billion people into the metaverse doing hundreds of dollars a piece in digital commerce by the end of the decade? If we do that, we’ll build a business as big as our current ad business within this decade. I think that’s a very exciting thing. I think a big part of how you do that is pushing the open metaverse forward, which is what we’re going to do.
So yes, Apple is going to be a competitor. I think that’s pretty clear, but he’s actually a very deep competitor. it’s not alone [that] they have a device that has a few more features than us. It’s a very deep philosophical competition about which direction the Internet should go. And I’m proud of the investments we’re making to help push the open metaverse into this and hopefully make the next version of computing a little more open.