Meta reorganizes Reality Labs after tasting the sweetness of AI
Written by: Mu Mu
Reality Labs’ continued losses have made Meta’s journey into the metaverse more difficult than SpaceX’s “landing on Mars,” and drastic reforms are still ongoing.
Recently, Meta announced a major reorganization of Reality Labs, which is responsible for the Metaverse and virtual reality business, and split it into two departments: "Metaverse" and "Wearable Devices". Future plans are also divided into two parts. The Metaverse department focuses on the development of Quest series head-mounted VR products, and the Wearable Devices department will focus on smart glasses products.
The adjusted Meta has increased the weight of wearable devices in its internal business. The company's CTO Andrew Bosworth emphasized that the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses launched by Meta have received a warm market response and are "much more successful than expected."
The sales of this smart glasses have made Meta see AI The enhancements brought to XR hardware were quickly incorporated into Reality Labs’ system after tasting the sweetness, hoping to use AI The development of new hardware reversed the department's losses.
Reality Labs adds wearables business
Meta's metaverse business unit, Reality Labs, has suffered "two consecutive quarters of losses". In the first quarter of this year, Reality Labs grew 30% year-on-year, but still lost $3.85 billion, compared with $3.5 billion in the previous quarter. It is estimated that since 2019, Reality Labs has accumulated losses of more than $50 billion (equivalent to about 350 billion yuan).
Reality Labs' consecutive losses have cast a shadow over Meta's vision of the metaverse. Not only is it under internal operational pressure and shareholder doubts, but Zuckerberg's dream of the metaverse has also been ridiculed by the outside world.
After continuous layoffs, the reform of Reality Labs is still continuing. The department will undergo a major reorganization. The original department will be split into the "Metaverse Department" responsible for the Quest headset product line, the social platform Horizon and related technologies, and the "Wearable Devices" department covering Meta's other software and hardware products, including smart glasses in cooperation with Ray-Ban.
This is Meta’s largest reorganization since its name change in 2020.
Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth explained the purpose of the reorganization in an internal memo to employees: the company continues to be committed to the development of MR and the Metaverse, hoping to AI Create a more integrated product experience.
Part of Meta's internal memo
From Andrew Bosworth's internal letter, we can see that smart glasses, wearable devices, and AI have become keywords. However, Reality Labs' traditional business lines such as the Quest series of head-mounted displays and the metaverse social platform Horizon are no longer prominent.
This is indeed the reality. The shipment volume of the new generation Meta MR headset Quest3 has been reduced.
Last October, Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at Tianfeng International who focuses on the XR hardware market, pointed out that the initial estimated shipments of Quest3 in 2023 were more than 7 million units, but due to expected weak demand, the shipments in 2023 were estimated to be 2-2.5 million units, while the shipments in 2024 were estimated to be about 1 million units.
Faced with reality, Meta had to find a new way out for Reality Labs. Zuckerberg once said that the vision of the Metaverse is too big, and he expects Reality Labs to be profitable in 2030. The existence of this department is currently seen as a "long-term investment in future planning."
Today, wearable devices have been added to Reality Labs as a new business, largely because AI smart hardware has released potential profit points. Bosworth revealed in the memo that the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses launched by Meta have received a warm market response and are "much more successful than expected."
This means that the revenue generated by this new hardware can directly narrow Reality Labs' losses.
AI features boost Meta's new hardware sales
The term “wearable devices” is not new, but when the word “smart” is added, we have to mention the improvement that AI brings to hardware functions. The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses mentioned by Bosworth have achieved impressive sales, which is largely due to the support of AI.
The first generation of this pair of glasses, Ray-Ban Stories, was released in September 2021. By February 2023, only 300,000 pairs had been sold, with only 27,000 monthly active users, less than 10% of the total sales.
In September 2023, after Meta joined the cooperation, Ray-Ban Meta was unveiled together with VR headset Meta Quest 3. The shipment volume in Q4 of 2023 alone exceeded 300,000 units, almost catching up with the full-cycle sales of the first generation. Foreign media The Verge predicts that the sales volume of this product may have exceeded 1 million units.
The sales performance of Meta Quest3, which was released at the same time, was lower than expected. RoadToVR counted the sales performance of Quest2 and Quest3 on Amazon platform during the Black Friday last year (a period of one month), of which the total sales of the two were about 240,000 units, and the sales of Quest2 accounted for 70.2%, which was much higher than Quest3.
Meta also mentioned in the blog post that the Ray-Ban Meta product has achieved market performance that exceeded expectations. "The glasses are selling faster than we can produce them." The team is currently working on launching more new styles.
Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses appearance
Compared with the first generation, the Ray-Ban Meta has hardly changed in appearance. It has won this comeback battle, and it is really thanks to the help of AI.
In terms of hardware functions, Ray-Ban Meta has undergone an all-round upgrade, including camera, storage space, speakers, microphone, standby time, and its own weight, etc.
But these are all optimizations of existing hardware. The real breakthrough in functionality is the AI function introduced in April 2023. The "Hey Meta" voice command can directly wake up the Ray-Ban Meta's AI assistant, allowing the glasses to perform object recognition, real-time translation, weather consultation and other functions.
Meta is using the "+AI" approach to extend the life of its Metaverse project. Not only Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, but also Meta's entire AI department was reorganized on June 2 this year, with the former Facebook AI Research Institute FAIR being merged into Reality Labs.
FAIR can be said to be one of the most popular star laboratories in the field of AI. It was established in 2013 by Yann LeCu, a deep learning pioneer (creator of convolutional neural networks and Turing Award winner). The laboratory's influence in the field of deep learning frameworks is almost spread throughout the entire ecosystem.
If XR hardware is the body support for humans to enter the Metaverse, then AI is the brain. FAIR, which studies AI, not only allows Reality Labs, which develops hardware, to catch the AI trend, but will also directly increase the intelligence of Meta's virtual reality hardware from a functional perspective.
Andrew Bosworthy has already said that he wants to "build the entire Meta using artificial intelligence."
The article comes from the Internet:Meta reorganizes Reality Labs after tasting the sweetness of AI
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