Facebook presented its quarterly results Monday, October 28 in the evening. In particular, the company announced that its spending in the field of virtual and augmented reality (AR / VR) will exceed $ 10 billion by the end of the year. Mark Zuckerberg also warned investors that these expenses will gradually increase in the years to come.
A bet on the future
This is a bet on the future that the leader made a long time ago, since his acquisition of the start-up Oculus for $ 2.3 billion in 2014. The company has not stopped to recruit and invest since. Latest announcement: the objective of recruiting 10,000 people in Europe to work on these themes.
A project for which Facebook has chosen for a few months the name of “metaverse”, a buzzword implying real-time 3D immersive navigation between different “virtual worlds”. Mark Zuckerberg aims to “reach a billion people” by the end of the decade with this concept, which he describes as “the successor to the mobile Internet”.
Reality Labs takes its independence
As a sign that things are accelerating, Facebook will split its financial statements regarding Reality Labs, its dedicated AR / VR division, from the fourth quarter of 2021. The implication could be that its financial results (sales of the Oculus Quest 2 and associated applications) are good enough to justify it, despite the colossal investments from which it benefits and which will not make it profitable for a long time.
More generally, Facebook’s results are good. The company, which is about to change its name to reflect its new priorities in (drum rolls) virtual and augmented reality, generated $ 29 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2021, compared to $ 21.5 billion at the same period in 2020.
Facebook and Instagram to refocus on young adults
If she sees “the metaverse” as her future, she does not forget her current products. Mark Zuckerberg in particular recognized that the social networks Facebook and especially Instagram are in difficulty on the demographics of young adults, who have migrated to TikTok. The company will therefore strive to win back this precious target, and in the case of Facebook will stop “optimizing the product for older people”. It is undoubtedly easier said than done, the young people being in search of novelty and disdainful towards the existing one. The leader, however, warned that this change would take years to implement.
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