Meta Actuality Labs achieved its highest income but in This fall 2023, over $1 billion for the primary time.
Actuality Labs is the division of Meta behind Quest headsets, the Ray-Ban good glasses, the Horizon platform, and analysis & growth towards AR glasses and their neural wristband enter system.
In its This fall earnings name immediately Meta reported $1.07 billion Actuality Labs quarterly income.
Being the vacation season, This fall has all the time been the strongest quarter for Actuality Labs since Meta began breaking out its financials in This fall 2020. However This fall 2023 was the strongest ever by far.
Meta CFO Susan Li informed traders this report income was “pushed by Quest 3 gross sales in the course of the vacation season”. Quest 3 launched on October 10, and This fall contains October, November, and December.
For comparability, Apple has reportedly offered simply over 200,000 Imaginative and prescient Professional preorders, equating to over $700 million in income.
Meta Actuality Labs additionally reported its highest ever prices in This fall nevertheless, $5.72 billion, leading to a $4.65 billion quarterly “loss”.
However whereas describing this as a loss is technically appropriate in a monetary sense, in actuality it is extra correct to explain most of it as long run funding. XR headsets like Quest are nonetheless a comparatively early know-how, removed from maturity, and Meta hasn’t even launched its first AR glasses but. Greater than 50% of Actuality Labs spending is on the analysis and growth of AR glasses.
Li informed traders she expects these losses to extend meaningfully over the subsequent 12 months resulting from “ongoing product growth efforts in augmented actuality/digital actuality and our investments to additional scale our ecosystem”.
That product growth refers back to the AR glasses and future Quest headsets. Meta reportedly plans to ship a less expensive model of Quest 3 this 12 months that could be known as Quest 3 Lite, and is reportedly working with LG on a Quest Professional 2 for 2025.
It is much less clear what “investments to additional scale our ecosystem” means, however it may seek advice from VR content material and developer funding. Meta has acquired eight sport studios lately and simply launched two AAA video games for Quest, Asgard’s Wrath 2 from one among its studios and Murderer’s Creed Nexus from Ubisoft. It additionally continues to closely spend money on its Horizon “metaverse” platform, bringing it to cellular and net final 12 months and constructing a first-party studio to ship prime quality video games inside it.
Mark Zuckerberg has previously informed traders that he does not count on Actuality Labs to be worthwhile till the 2030s, seeing it as a long-term funding in the way forward for computing.
