According to Meta, Meta will stop all development of its fledgling smartwatch and smart display projects. Reuters. The company’s executives reportedly told employees — those left after mass layoffs that saw 11,000 people lose jobs — in a townhall meeting that it would end work on Portal. Meta used to sell Portal devices to consumers. The device saw an increase in sales at the height of the pandemic. The company was eventually acquired by Meta. Changed strategiesIn June, they decided to sell the items to businesses.
InformationPortal was reported as less than 1 % of the global market despite an increase in sales for 2021. It was likely that the pursuit of the consumer segment was no longer worthwhile. Now, the company feels it is not worth the effort to develop the device. Andrew Bosworth, chief technology officer, told employees at the meeting that “it was just going to be so long, and require such an investment to get in the enterprise segment, it felt as the wrong way to spend your time, and money.”
However, there have been reports that Meta had yet to release a smartwatch. leaksOver the years, much has been written about this particular project. It’s unlikely that we will ever see it, unless Meta decides not to revisit its development many years later. Bosworth indicated that the smartwatch company’s development team will now focus on Bosworth’s. Augmented Reality GlassesAnd that’s because half of Meta’s investment in Reality Labs will go towards its AR projects.
Portal’s demise was also announced by the executives. 54% of those who were laid off were in business positions while the rest were in technology roles. The company lost many employees who had high performance ratings and was affected by the loss of their teams. The executives announced that Meta will combine its voice and video calling units with other messaging teams and create a new division to address difficult engineering problems.
ReutersThe report doesn’t mention whether or not the executives have revealed when the Portal models will be phased off, nor if it will continue selling them. It didn’t say when support for current devices would end. We’ve reached out to Meta for additional information and will update this article when we have more.
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