Why would I, as a potential hardware maker, wish to compete in a market where the existing main producer is a mega wealthy entity that is already dumping product below cost and is capable of doing so indefinitely?
The people who want to buy a Honda aren't the same people who want to buy an Acura, even though it's (essentially) the same parts.
Let's say that, tomorrow, Gucci or Dolce and Gabanna (or however you spell that) want to make a VR headset (why? who knows?). They don't have the tech acumen to compete with Facebook on experience, but they have the brand to compete on "people who want to be seen in Gucci."
Is there a market for that? I don't know. But this opens Facebook up to the possibility of making that deal.
Why would they want to sell at/below cost forever? The reason they do this now is to make the platform viable.
The only reason they are focusing on cheaper devices now is to build the platform and try to get more users, to in turn get more data on what the killer usecases will be.
Think of this as a play like Android. Google doesn’t care what goes on in the commodified end of the spectrum, as long as there is one. Google does ship flagship phones (in competition with eg Samsung) and that is fine.
It may be that there are more places to compete in the VR Headset Market that people on HN don't know about.
Like you said, this is probably something like an Android play. Everyone was talking about the Apple Vision Pro as the VR Market's "iPhone moment" when it came out - maybe Meta Vision OS (or whatever they're calling it) is Facebook's Android moment.
And yeah, Facebook would probably be ok with others taking the low end of the market if they do it well. Right now, Facebook is the only company willing to take a loss on their own platform. So they do.
Particular Mac users who happen to particularly like the physical and mental ergonomics, and locational and furniture freedom, of arrangeable virtual screens and a beautiful visual isolation chamber on demand.
(And in my case, who have dramatically customized the light shield and straps to be super comfortable for long periods.
I would buy the next version at twice the price if it came out tomorrow. And give up a lot to do it.
But that is a VERY niche market. There are only three of us happy campers, after the return wave. It is definitely not an iPhone - yet.
Personally, I think they should lean into it as a MacBook Pro killer. Make it a first class pro computing device. That is a good rationale for keeping around a high end spec, high priced version.
Then have Air versions when it becomes possible to ship a cheap enough iOS-computing level version for the masses.
As long as VR is limited to facehuggers the market will remain niche. VR glasses are a good few years (decades?) off.
In the meantime Apple will eat the high end and probably some of the low end.
So where does that leave Meta?
It doesn't help that Meta is more of an annoyance than brand. I'm not sure anyone actually likes Meta or Meta's products. While they're tolerated to some extent, they're perceived as fundamentally boring or irritating in a way that is deadly for brands.
I would also buy another AVP immediately, if I broke this, or if a better one came out,
But that is… extremely niche. The OS is as bad as iOS 1.0 was — but without the obvious utility to a huge number of people. I’m not sure Apple can pull this off.
But, I have all the Meta headsets, too, and have used them for this purpose. That gives me the perspective to understand that, while on one hand it is indeed “just another VR headset”, there has never been one actually usable for this before. Apple has the lead along a dew different axes. The question is, do they have the stomach to lose money on it for 10 years like Meta has>
(Even if they don’t literally sell it below cost, like Meta, it won’t work out if they don’t keep iterating as hard as they can on the software side. Like the first iPhone, it is simultaneously amazing, unprecedented, and objectively awful in many ways.)
P.S. I do easy work in here on the gym machines, too. Not just HN-reading. ;-)
The normal dictation feature is so bad it is unusable for more than a sentence fragment. The one enabled via Accessibility is incredibly good, aside from a bit more latency than I’d like (but easy to get used to that), and enables mixed voice dictation and keyboard-typing, without switching modes.
Is this a command or an opinion that left out the subject of the sentence?
I put the pan on the stove.
Put the pan on the stove.
I talk to your brother.
Talk to your brother.
Leaving out the "I" changes the meaning of the sentence here. "I disagree with x" means something else entirely than "Disagree with x."
* https://www.scribd.com/document/399594551/2015-06-22-MARK-S-...
It would help if Meta said something about that. Ideally for potential third party hardware manufacturers, they’d promise to leave the hardware market once a vibrant ecosystem exists.
Defining “vibrant” then would be hard to impossible, though. The edge cases are easy, but uninteresting. If none of the others are making money on hardware there is no vibrant system. If multiple other parties are making money, they probably wouldn’t care much whether Meta makes some money, too.
For in-between cases, where third parties make some money, Meta will have to choose between staying in the market because others don’t sell enough and Meta leaving the market so that others get more room to sell and thus become profitable.
* https://www.scribd.com/document/399594551/2015-06-22-MARK-S-...
The only thing that I can imagine that would be more privacy invasive would be a device that directly reads your brain waves while you are exposed to different stimuli.
And on that note I can’t wait to see Meta’s answer to Neuralink!
For example, if you're selling VR headsets for the purposes of industrial training, you may not want the consumer-grade hardware Meta is selling. You may need weather-sealing to allow outdoor operation. You may need vastly higher-resolution screens for industrial applications. The list of specializations goes on.
The specialized businesses tend to have wider moats and bigger margins. The TAM is smaller - too small for a mega-cap company like Meta to care about, but nonetheless can contribute to the health of the ecosystem.
This play gives influence over these niche, specialized uses of AR/VR without having to commit the entire company to it.
For example think of a medical instruments company that trains on VR headsets. Their choices right now are to use consumer-grade hardware which may not hit all of their needs, or become a full-on AR/VR company with all the requisite R&D that involves.
This allows these companies to exist in the middle ground - having the core R&D being done by another party, but having sufficient control to ship specialized hardware.
Now, Hondas and Acuras are different products. You can say "oh, they're essentially the same" and if you truly believe that, I'll sell you a Core i3 processor for the price of a Core i7. Yea, they're essentially the same, but it's the differences that make one better than the other. The point is that the high end isn't about branding. The high end is about capability. Apple has shown that their iPhone will outsell any luxury-branded Android phone to rich people because some things are about capability, not a logo. Samsung's flagships will way outsell some luxury logo smartphone too. The high end here is really about devices with better capabilities and it allows companies with good hardware businesses (like ASUS and Lenovo) to build something in the Meta VR ecosystem.
It's also possibly a way for Meta to stop dumping Quest devices. They'd rather just own the ecosystem rather than doing the hardware. If they can get ASUS, Lenovo, and others to do the low-margin hardware work and pick up the tab for a lot of the marketing, that's a win for Meta. Maybe Meta simply backs out of hardware over the next 5 years if a nice third party hardware ecosystem arises.
But I think this is going to be tough with VR. When you're trying to make an immersive experience, you need a baseline of hardware. It's also easier when you know the hardware you're trying to target. Android development can be frustrating because there's so much variance in speed and capabilities. One of the reason gaming consoles exist is that targeting a small set of hardware/capabilities makes things easier. That's not to say that PC gaming doesn't exist, but it can be hard because gamers need to spend a lot of money on hardware and there's a variance in capabilities that you need to account for - and who you might simply exclude. With a phone, it's less of an immersive experience for most apps which are just displaying something. They might display it slower, the UX might be laggier, etc. but it works. VR can't be laggy.
In some ways, it feels like Meta is trying to become a game console company without having to subsidize the console. That would be big if they can pull it off. I guess in many ways this is what Steam pulled off on the PC - taking a 30% cut without having to subsidize any hardware. We'll see if Meta can do the same for VR.
Porsche, or whatever, have a great and meaningful brand when it comes to cars, but that doesn’t translate to smartphones. So when you see a phone with the Porsche logo the brand isn’t really gonna do much for you.
How have they shown this?
Nit, but as an Acura driver (chooser), I can tell you that they are definitely not essentially the same parts. The irrelevant parts are the same, but everything that matters to the driver (suspension/drivetrain, interior materials, technology, etc.) all all different and better in the Acura. I get what you're trying to say, but that was not a good metaphor.
Anyway, I also get what you're trying to say.
Heck, I've got a Civic intake manifold in the room with me to replace the Acura one, haha. (The generation of K series after mine has better airflow and it's an easy enough swap.)
The Acura brand doesn't even exist outside of the US- if a car is sold in Europe or Japan the parts are Honda.
Can't go into high-end because for a device to make sense either an existing ecosystem around it or high confidence in one appearing. If you tell me that I can buy a 3k dollar vr headset that can run current quest library, I would pretend you're joking.
Mid-end is where we're at right now has/had very small margins because despite it being mid-end - you still have to use high-end components due to lack of options.
I can see someone like Porsche Design making a "high-end" headset (in terms of price, components would be the same). The only option for low-end is to use components previously used in mid-end that would need to compete with used previous gens since they would be nearly identical on the hardware level.
To put this very concretely, look at Pimax. Their Crystal headset allegedly has standalone capability. All the hardware is there for it, they make this thing, they sell it -- but they don't have a standalone platform, and have no hope whatsoever of being able to develop one.
For PCVR, they just use regular standard SteamVR and OpenXR, but for standalone usage, they suddenly have to be an amazing software company and they definitely are not. Using Horizon makes a ton of sense, and makes their product more attractive and better than it is without it.
Regardless of whether they can sell the hardware at a loss forever, they probably won't need to.
Third-party hardware is engineering labor that Meta doesn't have to pay for. In fact, it's engineering labor that will pay Meta through royalties. Cost-cutting measures developed by those third parties can easily be copied by Meta's own product, reducing the cost of future versions of the hardware. Cheaper options in the marketplace also help Meta gain market penetration without their own hardware developing a reputation for poor quality.
After a couple generations, vendor lock-in will start to set in, and they'll be able to charge more without losing customers. The aforementioned cost-cutting techniques start to pile up, too.
Which leaves a huge opportunity for professionals and businesses.
Because you want to expand your market.
Let's say you are Pimax or Bigscreen Beyond and want to target users who don't have large gaming PC's - this is an obvious option for them.