After 12 long years of trying, Meta has finally found its hardware platform: glasses. From the beginning of the smartphone era, Meta knew that building their customer’s hardware was the best way to ensure their software, and ads, can be used exactly as Meta intends. They even tried to build a smartphone, launching the ‘First’ with HTC in 2013.
The smartphone project was dead on arrival, so Meta started looking for the next consumer platform. They bet big on VR and they were wrong. After the multi-billion acquisition of Oculus, Meta has poured another ~$80B into their VR hardware over the last decade but the resulting revenue is only ~$10B and the market remains niche.
In 2018, Meta created a video calling device, the ‘Portal’. Its launch was well timed, as the smart home concept was becoming mainstream and the Portal was a good product with best in class video quality. However, Meta’s data policies were seen as intrusive with some reviewers calling it dystopian. Sales never took off and Meta discontinued the product in 2022.
The first glasses product was launched in 2021, with Ray-Ban, and was not the first to market, with Google and Snapchat both launching products earlier. But it was the best smart glasses product we’d seen by far, because they were *stylish*. The privacy concerns might remain but most people simply didn’t know you were wearing a recording device.
The latest versions are even better: more battery life, better camera, audio and crucially more colors and frames. By being unobstrustive and cool, Meta has made us forget about data privacy. In the era of AI, Meta is winning with style and they’ve finally nailed hardware.
