South Korean tech giant LG Electronics has ended its extended reality (XR) partnership with Meta Platforms three months after they agreed to jointly develop XR devices, including virtual headsets, the Company has not explained why.
LG is seeking a new partner believed to be Amazon according to sources and several media Companies.
What they are after is an operating system and software for XR devices that LG was planning to unveil next year.
South Korean news outlets claim that the partnership has completely broken down due to a lack of synergy, LG denies terminating the deal despite overwhelming evidence that the deal is dead in the water.
One issue appears to be the negativity around Meta and their broken relationship with media Companies due to funding withdrawals along with various Government investigations of Meta’s operations in various Countries.
The joint venture with Meta was initially designed to combine Meta’s Horizon Worlds mixed reality platform with LG’s TV business capabilities, that include using their WebOS software to capture data on consumers, which is then offered for sale to third parties via advertising deals, often without consumers knowing that data on their TV viewing and personal home habits are being sold.
At one stage there were discussions about integrating on-device AI using Meta’s large language models in LGs data capture operations which is based around an expanded Web OS.
Several people with inside knowledge at LG state that LG is definitely pursuing a new XR headset partnership with Amazon.
They claim move would help LG leverage Amazon Prime’s vast library of streaming content and its subscriber base of 200 million consumers.
This potential setback for Meta comes at a time when the company along with Apple and their Vision initiative, is struggling to prevent losses in its AR and VR businesses.
Meta’s Reality Labs has reportedly burned through a billion dollars every month since June 2022.
The wider VR/AR product industry is also facing challenges, with falling consumer interest.
Sony has paused production of its PSVR 2 headset due to unsold inventory, while the adoption of Apple’s Vision Pro headset has been slower than anticipated, leading to low sales in some Apple stores.