\n<\/p>\n
On the theme of opening up, Meta is also pushing for more ways to discover alternative app stores. It\u2019s making its experimental App Lab\u00a0store more prominent and even inviting Google to bring the Play Store to its operating system, which is now called Horizon OS. In a blog post<\/a>, Meta additionally said that it\u2019s working on a spatial framework\u00a0for developers to more easily port their mobile apps to Horizon OS.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Crucially for Meta, Horizon OS includes the Horizon social layer, a 3D, Roblox<\/em>-meets-The Sims<\/em> open-world platform<\/a>. After a buggy and sluggish start<\/a> on the Quest, Meta has been working to improve Horizon and recently brought it to the web as a 2D experience<\/a>. Now, any hardware company that wants to build a device with Horizon OS will help extend the reach of Horizon the social network, which Meta wants to eventually monetize with ads and commerce. (Yes, this is approaching Google levels of naming confusion.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meta has yet to share more on the business terms of its Horizon OS license, aside from that social network tie-in and requiring the use of Qualcomm chips. \u201cYou can imagine a lightweight headset that pairs with your computer on your desk to provide the best work experience at home or anywhere you go,\u201d CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a video announcing the news. \u201cOr imagine one that\u2019s fully focused on watching immersive entertainment like movies and videos with the highest resolution OLED screens out there.\u201d Spokespeople for Lenovo, Asus, and Xbox didn\u2019t respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Zuckerberg has been clear that he wants his company to be a more open platform than Apple\u2019s. Here, he\u2019s firmly positioning Meta\u2019s Horizon OS as the Android alternative to Apple\u2019s Vision Pro. Given how Android was more of a reaction to the iPhone, an analogy he\u2019d probably prefer is how Microsoft built the early PC market by licensing Windows.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This has been a long time coming. \u201cIn the open ecosystem, basically you have much broader partnerships,\u201d Zuckerberg told me in an interview in the fall of 2022<\/a>. \u201cSo Microsoft didn\u2019t build the chips; they didn\u2019t build the PCs; they didn\u2019t build the App Store. It was all this key stuff that was developed around the ecosystem. Similar to Android. And that\u2019s basically what we hope to build here \u2014 is the open ecosystem for the next generation of computing around virtual and augmented reality in the metaverse more broadly, which means that there are going to need to be all these partnerships.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n