Meta is offering its Quest headsets' OS to competitors
In a move that could see it establish itself as a dominant player in the AR/VR space, Meta plans to offer its Quest headsets' operating system to competitors.
What this means is that other hardware makers such as Microsoft, ASUSTek, and Lenovo will now be able to build their headsets using the Meta Horizon OS – a rebranded operating system that brings capabilities like gesture recognition, passthrough, scene understanding, and spatial anchors to the devices that run on it.
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For context, Lenovo is building an MR device for productivity, learning, and entertainment using the Horizon OS, and ASUS' Republic of Gamers is developing a gaming headset using the same Horizon OS. Meta itself has confirmed that it is using the Horizon OS to make a limited-edition version of the Quest headset inspired by Microsoft's Xbox gaming console.
According to Zuckerberg, Meta is at a point where it should now be able to build its own devices and operating system with little reliance, if any, on other competitors, especially after Meta had a squabble with Apple concerning its privacy decisions and in-app fees for iOS applications that cost it $10 billion in revenue in 2022, per a report from Bloomberg.
Given that Meta has sold around 20 million Quest 2 headsets, per data obtained from TechRadar, which is the most popular headset it has produced, the move could only mean one thing: that more people will now be able to have access to these devices at an affordable rate.