Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Sina Science and Technology News Beijing time on October 27 morning news, the latest financial report shows that a year after the transition to meta-universe, Facebook parent company Meta is paying a high cost. Reality Labs, the division in charge of Meta's virtual reality and augmented reality projects, posted record losses in the third quarter.

Reality Labs lost $3.7 billion in the quarter, up from $2.6 billion a year ago and $2.8 billion in the previous quarter. The division has lost more than $9 billion so far in 2022. Dave Whener, Meta's outgoing chief financial officer, said Reality Labs's loss trend was unlikely to reverse any time soon. "We expect Reality Labs's operating loss to rise significantly in 2023 compared with the same period last year."

It turns out that Meta's investment in meta-universe has paid a huge price. Earlier this year, Meta reported a loss of $10 billion for Reality Labs in 2021. The company also confirmed that the "next generation of consumer-facing Quest headset", or Meta Quest 3, is expected to be launched "later next year".

However, Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta, said investment in "next-generation computing platforms" remained a top priority. "this is an important cause," he said. before each product becomes mainstream, it tends to go through multiple versions of iterations. but we believe that our work here is historically important and will help us lay the foundation, provide a new way of interaction, and integrate technology into our lives. "

Meanwhile, Zuckerberg warned that Meta could face "short-term revenue challenges". Meta's revenue in the third quarter was $28 billion, in line with analysts' expectations, but Zuckerberg said the figure "still lags behind where I think it should be".

Mr Zuckerberg also confirmed that Meta would continue to slash hiring in response to slowing revenue growth. "some teams will expand significantly, but most others will remain the same or shrink next year. Overall, we expect the entire organization to be roughly the same or slightly smaller by the end of 2023." .

On the other hand, Meta's "family of mobile apps" continues to grow. Zuckerberg reported new milestones for Instagram and WhatsApp. Currently, Instagram has 2 billion monthly active users, while WhatsApp already has 2 billion daily active users. "there is a lot of speculation about user engagement in our apps, and what we are seeing is more positive," he said. "

Zuckerberg also said that he wants to transform Meta's services into a "discovery engine" and that users' message flow will come more from recommendation algorithms. He believes that this will help Meta to better compete.

Zuckerberg also said that Meta's high investment in meta-universe will eventually pay off because Meta will continue to face advertising revenue problems in the face of Apple's privacy policy changes. Investors have long been skeptical of Zuckerberg's bet on metamosmos. A major shareholder said earlier this week that Meta had lost investor confidence.

Such doubts remained on Meta's third-quarter earnings call. One analyst asked: "to sum up, the feeling of investors right now is that there are too many experimental bets. I think everyone wants to hear from you why these bets pay off."

Zuckerberg replied: "some things are experimental, and some things we just don't know how good the future will be. There is a difference between the two. Meta-universe is a long-term project that we are working on. I don't know, but I think it will work in the end."

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