Meta kills off Portal business, winds down smartwatch initiative

Back in 2018, Meta announced Portal devices which allowed quick access to video calling services, Amazon Alexa digital assistant, a smart camera, and more. However, this category never really took off, and we learned in June 2022 that Meta is repositioning Portal devices as enterprise hardware rather than something meant for regular consumers. Fast-forward five months, and it appears that Meta is killing the business altogether.

Reuters reports that Meta has made the decision to close shop on its Portal smart display business and wind down on its smartwatch initiative as well. This news follows the company initiating its biggest layoff this week, affecting 11,000 employees - roughly 13% of its workforce.

In light of the layoffs as well as the ongoing economic downturn, it's no surprise to see Meta reducing expenditure and effort on products that are not returning much of a profit, if any. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has emphasized that the company will be focusing on "high priority growth areas" such as the metaverse, its AI discovery business, and its ad platform.

It's evident that Portal devices didn't make the cut in terms of capital expenditure. Meta's smartwatch has been rumored for quite some time, too. Little is known about the wearable, but it appears that we'll see even less information about this moving forward, considering that Meta is winding down investment on this front too. We heard similar news back in June, and the latest revelation just appears to be confirmation of previous reports. It wouldn't be surprising to find out that it's the next project on the chopping block.

Source: Reuters