Meta and LG to “expedite” the former company’s extended reality (XR) business. What does that mean exactly? We don’t know, but Meta’s current VR/XR business is fairly robust, with the
LG says the ultimate goal of the partnership is “to combine the strengths of both companies across products, content, services and platforms to drive innovation in customer experiences within the burgeoning virtual space.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg traveled to LG’s headquarters in Seoul to announce the collaboration. During this visit, LG CEO William Cho tried out the Quest 3 and the recently-released The business leaders discussed “business strategies and considerations for next-gen XR device development.” LG’s CEO also seemed to take a particularly keen interest in Meta’s large language models and the potential to
As stated above, we don’t know exactly what this partnership will entail. LG says it hopes to bring together “Meta’s platform with its own content/service capabilities” from its TV business. That sounds pretty boring, but LG also said the partnership will combine “Meta’s diverse core technological elements with LG’s cutting-edge product and quality capabilities.”
This leads to the lens-shaped elephant in the room. Meta XR and VR devices require displays and LG makes displays. It could be just that simple. After all, even Apple relied on Sony for the micro-OLED displays
This news follows LG creating a dedicated XR business unit last year, which was founded to “accelerate the pursuit of new ventures in the virtual space arena.” This led to rumors that the company was planning to launch its own VR/XR headset, which could still happen.
