Facebook‘s parent company Meta seems to be scaling back hardware efforts.
Hot on the heels of the news that Meta has reportedly given up on producing a camera-equipped smartwatch comes a new report, by Variety and The Information, that the company is about to kill off its video-calling device Portal.
According to Variety, Meta will continue to sell its current inventory of Portal and will continue to provide long-term support to existing customers, but it will not produce new devices.
Portal first came out in 2018, with a redesign in 2019 and more variants launched in 2021. It was an odd mix between a digital picture frame, video calling device, and streaming device, with limited support for apps other than Facebook’s own. In our review of the 2019 version, we’ve found it usable but with limited appeal, as you could easily use existing hardware for video calls and streaming without dishing out money for a new device.
Variety’s report further states that Portal may live on, not as a consumer device but one aimed for business costumers. We’ve asked Facebook about it and will update the article when we hear back.
The Information’s report also says Meta has scaled back its plans to release a series of augmented reality glasses in the next several years. More precisely, the AR glasses that were scheduled to launch commercially in 2024 will become a “demonstration product,” and Meta plans to commercially release the second version of the glasses. This means we probably won’t see any AR glasses from Meta in the next several years.
