According to reports, Meta has reportedly rejected a potential partnership with Google that would have seen the pair collaborate on an augmented reality platform.
As first reported by The Information, Meta and Google executives are rumored to have met late last year over a proposal to jointly build “Android XR,” and Meta ultimately backed out.
Meta currently runs a modified version of Android on its handsets, but Google hasn’t made the full suite of apps available. It also prevented Meta from bringing the Android Play Store to its devices, which would have broadened its appeal by making thousands of apps available.
Smartphone apps are a quick win for headphone makers, and Apple took advantage of the power of iOS apps when it launched its Vision Pro headphones earlier this year.
While there are more than 1,000 dedicated spatial apps available for Vision Pro, it also supports over a million smartphone apps – a resource Meta doesn’t have to look for.
Sources have reported that Google would give Meta access to more Android apps if it agreed to a partnership, but Meta is reluctant to cede control of the platform that powers the Quest headset.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has talked about wanting to “own” the next computing platform, the same way Microsoft owned the PC era and Apple owned the smartphone era.
For Google, the guardian of the Android app store, a partnership with Meta would bring it into a market where it has so far failed to make an impact.
Google Glass was launched as a consumer headset, shut down, resurrected as a business headset and then shut down again last year.
It also killed another set of glasses – called Project Iris last year – despite touting their capabilities at Google I/O and releasing promotional materials.
Google also laid off the team running its XR hardware division earlier this year, but is putting itself at the center of Samsung’s XR partnership with chipmaker Qualcomm.
Meanwhile, Meta is reportedly planning to unveil its augmented reality glasses later this year.
According to a report from Business Insider, Meta will demonstrate the specs at Connect, but won’t immediately make them available for purchase. Meta has yet to reveal a date for Connect 2024, but it usually takes place in September or October.
In an interview late last year, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth waxed lyrical about a pair of glasses used internally by Meta staff, only to dampen the excitement by claiming they would likely never see the light of day.
“It’s probably our most exciting prototype we’ve had so far,” he said.