The difficult moment continues for Meta which, after having had to say goodbye to its cryptocurrency project, greeted an important executive who leaves the company, also had to proceed to downsize some hardware projects that he really cared about.
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The last few weeks have proved to be full of great changes for Meta, the Facebook parental company, with the well-known hi-tech giant of Menlo Park which, hit by several management changes, has also decided to downsize some of its ambitions in terms of hardware.
In recent days, around the same time that Guy Rosen took over as head of cybersecurity for Meta, a well-known executive of the same company announced his farewell, after 15 years of service alongside Zuckerberg, whom he met in 2007 when the person in question worked for Google as the vice president for global online operations and sales: this is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) Sheryl Sandberg who, specifically, in dedicating herself to her charitable projects in the near future, leaves behind a colossus from over 2 billion users who made a turnover of some 118 billion dollars last year alone.
Meanwhile, Meta is redefining its objectives also for what concerns the hardware. In the past few hours, Bloomberg magazine has published a series of interesting rumors relating to a particular Menlo Park project. Apparently, the $ 349 smartwatch, which should have debuted in the spring of 2023, will not be done: the data sheet that emerged in this regard included a wearable with a removable case, two physical buttons, GPS, Wi-Fi, and up to 18 hours of autonomy, equipped with two cameras.
One, front, 5 megapixel, would be used for video calls, while the other, on the pulse, 12 megapixel, would have captured photos and videos, to be shared via Instagram or WhatsApp. The reasons for the stop to the development of the watch, which would also have made it possible to manage music on Spotify, receive notifications, track heart rate, breathing and sports activities, include the cost cuts to the Reality Labs division and technical difficulties, perhaps dictated by the fact that the dorsal camera, to be used with the watch capsule extracted, could have interfered with the functions related to electromyography (detection of nerve impulses to be transformed into digital inputs for the control of one’s avatar in the Metaverse) . According to the source, Meta is still committed to the development of other wearable devices also to free itself from Google and Apple, with users who are forced to use their smartwatches to access its services. On the Metaverse side, according to JP Morgan, Meta has signed an agreement with Broadcom Inc to use its ASIC chips in its hardware destined for the Metaverse.
According to The Verge, there would be changes in the AR glasses as well. Specifically, Meta has decided that the “Orion” model, which could also have reached consumer users, will be reserved for developers only as its technical limitations (dim display, for example) would not have allowed such sales to be achieved. to justify its large-scale production. The plans for two other smart glasses will proceed as before: in 2023 the “Hypernova” model could make its debut, destined to work in tandem with a smartwatch while, according to a timeline not yet defined, a range model should make its debut taller, “Artemis”, less bulky and with better image display technology.
Finally, from Variety and The Information, rumors related to Portal devices would come. Here Meta would have decided to relegate them only to corporate users while, for the consumer one, no new models will be produced, limiting itself to providing assistance for those already in circulation as long as available stocks are exhausted. According to what emerges, this decision would be dictated by a series of circumstances: in particular, during the coronavirus restrictions, many companies would have taken to using the Portal (e.g. recent models compatible with Zoom and Microsoft teams) to keep employees in contact distributed here and there at their own residences, while sales for consumer users would have been nothing short of bad (600,000 Portal sold in 2020, 800,000 in 2021).