Mark Zuckerberg says Meta will offer its virtual reality OS to hardware companies, creating iPhone versus Android dynamic

Meta will partner with external hardware companies, including Lenovo, Microsoft and Asus, to build virtual reality headsets using the company's Meta Horizon operating system, the company said Monday.

The move will create new hardware devices that run on the same operating system and software as Meta's current first-party virtual reality hardware, such as the Quest 3 and Quest Pro.

The move further defines the fault lines of the virtual reality hardware market, months after Apple released its $3,500 virtual reality headset called Vision Pro in January.

According to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who shared the news in an Instagram video Monday, the announcement essentially recreates the Android versus iOS dynamic in smartphones — only for virtual reality headsets. Apple's VR product will remain pricier, and vertically integrated, but it will have to compete against a range of different hardware devices at various prices, all running atop Meta's operating system.

"In every era of computing, there are always open and closed models," Zuckerberg said. "With phones, Apple's closed model basically won out. Phones are tightly controlled, and you're locked into what they'll let you do. But it doesn't have to be this way."

The decision to make its operating system available to hardware partners also lines up with Meta's stated strategic reasoning for spending billions of dollars per quarter on virtual reality technology inside its Reality Labs division. In the fourth quarter of 2023, Meta reported an operating loss of $4.65 billion in the division on $1 billion in sales.

For years, Meta has chafed against Apple's App Store rules. Zuckerberg has said that the company is trying to develop a next-generation platform in virtual and augmented