Meta Reports Second Quarter Operating Loss of $2.8 Billion for its Metaverse Division

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Meta's second quarter results showed us that Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse vision is still very expensive. And its losses in its VR division reached $2.8 billion in the second quarter, even as its sales of virtual reality hardware and software continue to grow.

Meta has started releasing results from its Reality Labs division (formerly known as Facebook's Oculus division) to give investors an idea of ​​what it's investing in the next version of the internet, or metaverse , the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, as in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One.

The company broke some bad news (at least for VR software companies) yesterday when it announced that it would raise the prices of its Meta Quest 2 VR headsets by $100 each on August 1 . It also increases the prices of peripheral products.

Meta Reality Labs generated $452 million in revenue in the second quarter ended June 30, compared to $305 million a year ago and $695 million in the first quarter. The loss for the quarter was $2.8 billion in the second quarter, compared to a loss of $2.4 billion a year earlier and $2.96 billion in the first quarter.

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Overall net income was $6.69 billion on revenue of $28.8 billion in the second quarter, compared with net income of $10.4 billion on revenue of $28.8 billion. $29.1 billion business a year earlier. Analysts had expected net profit of $7.03 billion on $28.9 billion. Meta's daily active users were 1.97 billion, up 3% from a year ago. Every month, Meta's platforms reach more than three billion people.

"The metaverse is a huge opportunity for a number of reasons," Zuckerberg said on the analyst call. "It allows for a deeper social experience where you feel a realistic sense of presence with other people no matter what you're doing," whether it's gaming or meeting.

He said the company was spending money to build it in a way that would be the best possible platform, without the constraints that "our competitors put on us", i.e. Apple and its costs. Zuckerberg said the metaverse could unlock hundreds of billions of dollars or trillions of dollars over time.

He said it was obviously very expensive, but the Metaverse will be important to the way we live, and he's happy to play a part in creating it.

He said the company plans to launch a web-based version of its Horizon social metaverse platform later this year, and the company is hearing good things about Project Cambria hardware coming later this year.

In terms of forecasts, Meta said it expects Reality Labs to resume...