Meta has started licensing its Quest operating system to other manufacturers, such as Lenovo and Asus, and is collaborating with Xbox to produce a limited edition of Quest for gaming, as announced by the company in a blog post.
In addition, Meta is promoting new ways to discover alternative app stores, highlighting its experimental App Lab store and considering the inclusion of Google Play Store in its operating system, now called Horizon OS. And if that wasn’t enough, the company is also working on a spatial framework to facilitate developers in porting mobile apps to Horizon OS.
Horizon OS is Meta’s mixed reality operating system for its Quest glasses, compatible with eye, facial, hand, and body tracking, as well as passthrough and other features. It offers a “social layer” that allows users to move their identities, avatars, and friends between virtual spaces on different devices. Meta says that several manufacturers are working on devices that will use Horizon OS, such as ASUS ROG for high-performance headsets and Lenovo for mixed reality devices.
By expanding Horizon OS to other manufacturers, Meta makes it easier for developers to distribute virtual reality software and breaks down the barriers between Horizon Store and App Lab. This allows them to integrate into the growing augmented and virtual reality ecosystem, offering them opportunities to compete with Apple in mixed reality development.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, compared Horizon OS to Apple’s iOS, highlighting the openness of the former compared to Apple’s more closed approach. Meta’s strategy of attacking Apple is due to the recent launch of the Vision Pro, which, although it offers excellent features, is limited both by its high price and by restrictions on its distribution.
