Meta pauses third-party Horizon VR headsets program

Meta has “paused” its programme to licence its VR operating strategy to different hardware companies truthful they could build their ain headsets utilizing the platform, arsenic reported by Road to VR .

With the program, announced in April 2024, Meta announced that it would beryllium licensing the Quest OS headset — which, astatine the aforesaid time, it besides renamed to Horizon OS — to hardware makers for illustration Lenovo and Asus. In a blog station astatine the time, Meta said that the programme would springiness “more prime to consumers and a larger ecosystem for developers to build for.” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a video that “our extremity is to make it truthful that the unfastened exemplary defines the adjacent procreation of computing, again pinch the metaverse, glasses, and headsets.”

But now, Meta is pausing the programme to attraction connected its first-party offerings instead. “We person paused the programme to attraction connected building the world-class first-party hardware and package needed to beforehand the VR market,” Meta spokesperson Johanna Peace says successful a connection to The Verge. “We’re committed to this for the agelong word and will revisit opportunities for 3rd-party instrumentality partnerships arsenic the class evolves.”

Meta precocious delayed the motorboat of mixed reality glasses codenamed “Phoenix” from the 2nd half of 2026 to the first half of 2027 and is opening activity connected a caller Quest device, according to soul memos reported connected by Business Insider. The institution is reportedly looking astatine axing up to one-third of its metaverse budget adjacent year, and a spokesperson says that Meta is “shifting immoderate of our finance from Metaverse toward A.I. glasses and wearables.”