Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg received more bad news over the vacation season as his foray into the metaverse has yet to pay dividends for his struggling tech company.
Virtual reality (VR) headset sales fall 2% year-on-year in 2022, researchers say he told CNBC on Wednesday.
According to the analytical company NDP Group, sales of VR headsets generated just $1.1 billion in early December.
Ben Arnold, an NPD consumer electronics analyst, told CNBC that sales of the $400-a-unit Meta Quest 2 VR headset, which is taken into account a benchmark out there, have also fallen, though he didn’t say by how much.
According to research firm CCS Insight, in comparison with 2021, there was a 12 percent drop in shipments of world augmented reality (AR) and VR headsets. This 12 months, 9.6 million headsets were shipped worldwide.
“VR had a tremendous vacation in 2021,” Arnold told CNBC. “It was an amazing time last 12 months to get one in every of these products, and VR completely crushed it.”
According to NPD, the revenue generated from the sale of VR headsets doubled last 12 months from $530 million in 2020.
The Post sought comment from the NPD and Meta.
Meta, the parent company of social media apps Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has moved from a standard ad-based business model to a metaverse powered by VR and AR technology.
But this variation got here at a major cost to Meta’s bottom line.
Its stock has fallen greater than 65% for the reason that starting of this 12 months. Since Wednesday, Meta’s share price has fallen about 0.5%.
In late October, Meta announced a second consecutive quarter of revenue decline.
Menlo Park, California, earned $4.4 billion, or $1.64 per share, within the three months ended Sept. 30. That’s down 52% from $9.19 billion, or $3.22 per share, in the identical period a 12 months earlier.
Revenue fell 4% to $27.71 billion from $29.01 billion, barely greater than the $27.4 billion analysts had predicted.
Zuckerberg, whose net value was valued at $44.4 billion on Wednesday, hit a record $140 billion last 12 months.
While Zuckerberg has preached patience and is playing the long game, his bet on the metaverse has to this point been a failure.
Jim Cramer, a CNBC analyst who has been vocal about his support for Zuckerberg and his company’s management team, gave an emotional mea culpa on air in October after Meta released its latest earnings report.
Meta could have to do its job as other tech giants move into the metaverse in hopes of gaining market share for VR headsets.
Apple, Sony, Valve and Hewlett Packard are either planning to present their very own headsets or have already offered their products available on the market.
