The push for an open ecosystem offers Meta a chance to build on its early dominance in the AR/VR market, say analysts, while lowering the barrier for entry to hardware makers.
“This is a smart move for Meta to diversify their hardware ecosystem, while also working to make Meta Horizon OS the standard mixed-reality headset OS,” said Will McKeon-White, senior analyst at Forrester.“Before, they were effectively dependent on Oculus sales — this decouples their OS from their headset and hardware efforts.”
What is Horizon OS — and who will use it?
Based on a modified version of Google’s Android operating system, Meta’s Horizon OS is the result of a decade of work to build virtual and mixed reality products, the company said. Meta has spent billions of dollars in recent years to create devices such as the Quest 3 and Quest Pro. This includes adding features such as real-time video pass-through, “inside-out” tracking that tracks a user’s movements and position, and spatial anchors that allow digital objects to be fixed in physical space.
