Meta wants to be the Microsoft of headsets

On nan taxable of opening up, Meta is besides pushing for much ways to observe replacement app stores. It’s making its experimental App Lab store much salient and moreover inviting Google to bring nan Play Store to its operating system, which is now called Horizon OS. In a blog post, Meta additionally said that it’s moving connected a spatial framework for developers to much easy larboard their mobile apps to Horizon OS.

Crucially for Meta, Horizon OS includes nan Horizon societal layer, a 3D, Roblox-meets-The Sims open-world platform. After a buggy and sluggish start connected nan Quest, Meta has been moving to amended Horizon and precocious brought it to nan web arsenic a 2D experience. Now, immoderate hardware institution that wants to build a instrumentality pinch Horizon OS will thief widen nan scope of Horizon nan societal network, which Meta wants to yet monetize pinch ads and commerce. (Yes, this is approaching Google levels of naming confusion.)

Meta has yet to stock much connected nan business position of its Horizon OS license, speech from that societal web tie-in and requiring nan usage of Qualcomm chips. “You tin ideate a lightweight headset that pairs pinch your machine connected your table to supply nan champion activity acquisition astatine location aliases anyplace you go,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said successful a video announcing nan news. “Or ideate 1 that’s afloat focused connected watching immersive intermezo for illustration movies and videos pinch nan highest solution OLED screens retired there.” Spokespeople for Lenovo, Asus, and Xbox didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Zuckerberg has been clear that he wants his institution to beryllium a much unfastened level than Apple’s. Here, he’s firmly positioning Meta’s Horizon OS arsenic nan Android replacement to Apple’s Vision Pro. Given really Android was much of a guidance to nan iPhone, an affinity he’d astir apt for illustration is really Microsoft built nan early PC marketplace by licensing Windows.

This has been a agelong clip coming. “In nan unfastened ecosystem, fundamentally you person overmuch broader partnerships,” Zuckerberg told maine successful an question and reply successful nan autumn of 2022. “So Microsoft didn’t build nan chips; they didn’t build nan PCs; they didn’t build nan App Store. It was each this cardinal worldly that was developed astir nan ecosystem. Similar to Android. And that’s fundamentally what we dream to build present — is nan unfastened ecosystem for nan adjacent procreation of computing astir virtual and augmented reality successful nan metaverse much broadly, which intends that location are going to request to beryllium each these partnerships.”