According to the report from Information, Google and Meta held a meeting late last year where the two companies discussed the possibility of bringing Android XR to Meta headphones. While Meta was said to have rejected the partnership, which would have potentially allowed Quest’s handsets to run stock Android apps, Google is reportedly still open to the idea.
The Quest already runs an open-source version of Android, though Meta’s headset doesn’t have access to stock Android apps made for mobile devices like Apple’s Vision Pro has with content developed for the iPhone, which also boasts more than 1.5 million iOS apps on more than 1000’s of native Vision Pro applications.
Such a deal would make Meta more competitive with Apple in the short term by allowing users wider access to Android apps not built for the XR, but it would require the company to give up a good chunk of control over its platform.
Information believes that such a partnership can stop Meta from “owning[ing] the next computing platform for AR, VR and mixed reality,” which would also include Meta’s contribution to the development of Android XR rather than controlling its platform more directly as it does today.
As with all things Android, Google has more than a potential Meta partnership on its mind, as the company is expected to want Android XR to play the same role for XR handsets as its mobile operating system does for smartphones. It needs external hardware partners for that, as the company shut down a number of recent XR hardware projects in addition to abandoning the Google Daydream platform altogether in 2019.
For starters, Samsung announced early last year that it was working with Qualcomm and Google on its own handsets, which means we can expect some form of Android XR first. In addition, it was reported last summer that the South Korean tech giant delayed the as-yet-unnamed XR headphones to be more competitive with the Vision Pro.
Meanwhile, Meta has teamed up with LG to reportedly produce the next wave of Quest headsets, which could reportedly be both the top-of-the-line Quest Pro 2 as well as a cheaper headset.