The social media giant Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg expects that Meta’s metaverse play will result in a “significant” loss in the short term.
During a shareholder meeting, CEO Mark Zuckerberg made this statement. He believes the metaverse plan will result in losses for up to 5 years, which will have a heavy impact on the company’s stock.
Zuckerberg stated that this will be profitable in the long run, and that for the time being, the company’s income growth will come from its Instagram Reels.
According to a Bloomberg report, Mark Zuckerberg was responding to a query of a shareholder on return on investment at Meta’s annual meeting.
“We want to get the hardware to be as affordable as possible for everyone, and make sure the digital economy grows,” Zuckerberg told shareholders.
According to Meta’s board, many of its products for an “embodied internet,” in which users are immersed in a virtual world, are unlikely to be sustainable for another 10 to 15 years.
The stock price of Meta has dropped dramatically in 2022, down 43.4% year to date. Despite a lackluster Q1 financial report for 2022, the social media behemoth remains hopeful about the metaverse.
Meta has shifted its focus to the metaverse, with the goal of becoming the premier platform for its virtual experiences. This shift occurs as Facebook struggles to maintain growth, and Instagram faces stiff competition from apps like TikTok.
Meta spent $10 billion on designing its metaverse in 2021 alone. It currently has 10,000 employees working on Zuckerberg’s goal and plans to hire an additional 10,000.
Meta is ramping up its metaverse activities by launching a slew of new initiatives. Meta opened its first physical retail store in April, as well as an online shop where customers can try out Facebook’s increasing portfolio of smart hardware gadgets.
Last week, Meta filed five trademark applications for a payment platform called Meta Pay. Meta bought the MetaPay.com domain name from the South Dakota-based MetaBank in a $60 million deal during December 2021.