Although you probably haven’t purchased one, you’ve probably heard of Portal, Facebook’s connected screen designed for making video calls. Since its first marketing in 2018, this competitor of Google Nest Hub and Amazon Echo Show is regularly highlighted in advertising campaigns. However, it is rare to come across people who own them, even if the Meta group has widened the range. Portal exists in particular in the form of a camera to hang above your television, so you don’t have to buy an additional screen.
We thought Portal important for the Meta group, it seems not. According The Information et The Verge, Portal will soon no longer be a mainstream brand. There will always be screens for professionals, but Meta no longer wants to address individuals.
Meta will release fewer products
In Meta’s mind, there would now be only one word: metaverse. The material strategy of the group of Mark Zuckerberg would now be centered on virtual, mixed and augmented realities, rather than on the transformation into a box of hardware. Portal, which we imagined to become at Facebook what Echo is at Amazon, is therefore in danger of disappearing. Other products expected for several months, such as the Meta watch, would also be abandoned. Facebook’s goal is to release real augmented reality glasses in 2024, even if it means experimenting with simpler products like Ray-Ban Stories in the meantime.
In the future, Meta should continue to develop its Portal products, but probably without talking about it. Portal screens could be offered to companies looking for tools for videoconferencing, rather than to everyone, who already has enough to make video calls at home (with, at random… a smartphone ?). This abandonment would be accompanied by a drop in the budget of the AR / VR division, which is surprising given the ambitions of Meta. The company’s next headset, known as the Cambria, will launch later this year.
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