LG is reportedly pausing its partnership with Meta to develop an extended reality (XR) device that would take on Apple’s Vision Pro headset, just three months after announcing the joint venture.
While multiple Korean news outlets are reporting that the Meta partnership has broken down entirely due to a lack of “synergy” between the companies, LG has denied terminating the deal. “LG Electronics continues the XR partnership with Meta forged in February but is controlling its pace,” LG said in a statement to Korea JoongAng Daily.
Products from the collaboration, set to combine Meta’s Horizon Worlds mixed reality platform with content and service capabilities from LG’s TV business, were expected to hit the market next year. The potential for on-device AI integration was also being explored, courtesy of Meta’s large language models.
Adding to the confusion over what’s happening with the project, Seoul Economic Daily reports that the collaboration is still ongoing but is now likely targeting a 2027 release date. Meanwhile, several of the publications reporting that LG has walked away from Meta claim it’s instead pursuing a new XR headset partnership with Amazon that would benefit from Amazon Prime’s strong library of streaming content and 200 million subscribers.
(LG also has a slight habit of confirming rumors that it had previously dismissed, so any ongoing suspicion about the Meta partnership shouldn’t really come as a surprise.)
We have reached out to LG and Meta to clarify the future of the current headset project.
Meta’s Reality Labs program has reportedly lost a billion dollars every month since June 2022
This potential relationship breakdown comes as Meta struggles to prevent its AR and VR businesses from hemorrhaging money, with GamesIndustry.biz reporting last month that Reality Labs has burned a billion dollars every month since June 2022. Meta doesn’t seem to be dissuaded, however, announcing that it expects these losses to increase “meaningfully” year over year due to the company’s “ongoing product development efforts and our investments to further scale our ecosystem.”
Meanwhile, the wider VR / AR product industry is also struggling amid falling interest from consumers. Sony has reportedly paused production of its PSVR 2 headset due to a backlog of unsold inventory, and slow adoption of Apple’s Vision Pro headset has seen some Apple stores selling as few as two units per week, according to Bloomberg.
