Meta gives an early glimpse of physical store
STORY: Facebook’s parent company - Meta - gave an early glimpse of its first physical store on Wednesday.
Meta hopes the store - which is set to open on May 9th – will give people the opportunity to buy its Oculus virtual reality headset and to promote its idea of the “metaverse”.
It’s a term used to describe immersive shared virtual spaces and a largely theoretical future business for the company, which has invested heavily in virtual and augmented reality tech.
The store’s located at the main campus for Meta's Reality Labs unit - in the Silicon Valley town of Burlingame – California. That unit is developing the hardware products the company aims to sell there including the Quest 2 headset and Portal video chat devices.
It’s also where the company says you’ll be able to try Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses. Meta says it’s also rolling out a “shop” tab on its website.
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg says the metaverse could be the world's next big computing platform, but he has warned that it may take about a decade for the company's bets to pay off.
The Reality Labs division was also among the areas where Meta said it would cut back on some of its long-term investments, after it reported in April that growth had slowed, and that the company was still almost entirely reliant on digital ads for revenue.
