Meta Platforms chief executive Mark Zuckerberg remains positive about his firm’s metaverse ambitions despite recent events leading to billions in lost revenues.
He stated in a recent interview at the New York Times DealBook Summit on Thursday that “someone has to build [the Metaverse].”
He explained further: “I think things look very different on a ten-year time horizon than the zone that we’re in for the next few years […] I’m still completely optimistic about all the things that we’ve been optimistic about.”
Despite the major setbacks, he added that “seeing things through” would involve “powering through” doubts on its ambitions and remaining hopeful.
The news comes after Meta’s third quarter (Q3) earnings revealed record-breaking losses for its Reality Labs division, costing $9.44 billion in 2022 and leading to over $10 billion in losses last year.
At the event, he reaffirmed the Metaverse would become the next computing platform, adding: “We’re not going to be here in the 2030s communicating and using computing devices that are exactly the same as what we have today, and someone has to build that and invest in it and believe in it.”
He also stated that his company recently laid off 11,000 workers in early November amid “massive investments” in hardware such as its recent Meta Quest Pro device.
Zuckerberg also admitted Meta Platforms believed the economy and its business operations would “go in a certain direction,” citing eCommerce business performance due to COVID-19 last year.
“Obviously it hasn’t turned out that way,” Zuckerberg said.
Continuing, he added: “Our kind of operational focus over the next few years is going to be on efficiency and discipline and rigor and kind of just operating in a much tighter environment.”
Investments in Meta, Restrictions on Apple
He assured the audience that four-fifths of Meta’s investments remained in its suite of social media applications such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, among others. Reality Labs only comprises “less than 20 [percent]” of investments “until the Metaverse becomes a larger thing,” he explained.
40 percent of total Reality Labs investments funded its virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays and the second half for its “long-term most important form factor,” or smart glasses.
He later slammed Apple for restricting ad revenues on its App Store along with restrictions on cryptocurrency exchanges and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Slamming the Cupertino-based firm, Zuckerberg said, “I do think Apple has sort of singled themselves out as the only company that is trying to control unilaterally what apps get on a device and I don’t think that’s a sustainable or good place to be.”
He concluded: “I do think it is it is problematic for one company to be able to control what kind of app experiences get on the device.”
