LG and Meta's VR partnership was only announced in February, but recent reports have suggested that their planned "extended reality (XR) ventures" could already be in danger – and now a statement from LG has thrown the collaboration into further doubt.
Yesterday a number of Korean outlets reported that the LG and Meta headset has either been delayed from its 2025 release until 2027 (as suggested by Seoul Economic Daily, translated from Korean) or that the partnership might already have ended altogether (as reported by Korea Economy Daily).
To get to the bottom of this rumored breakup we reached out to both Meta and LG. An LG spokesperson denied that LG and Meta were no longer partnering on various projects, stating that “LG Electronics continues its collaboration with Meta in various areas such as AI and the metaverse".
Notably absent from that statement is any mention VR or XR. And the LG spokesperson went on to add vaguely that “we will maintain a close watch on customer needs, the content service ecosystem, and market conditions, adjusting the pace of our XR business accordingly".
Reading this statement, we’re a lot less certain that an LG OLED Meta Quest is in the works or will land anytime soon. Meta has yet to respond to our request for comment, but it doesn't appear to be in a rush to dismiss the rumors either – we'll update this story if and when we hear back.
This is all a bit of a shame, because LG and Meta’s VR partnership had us exceptionally excited for the future of Meta’s VR hardware – especially after seeing LG’s new OLEDoS displays for VR headsets. Unfortunately, those rumors that their relationship status has now at best switched to "it's complicated" appear to have some substance.
The two companies reportedly don’t see eye to eye in several areas, with LG apparently now looking to partner with other US companies such as Amazon. Analysts have speculated that this could be an effort to leverage Prime’s over 200 million subscribers.
There is evidence that Meta may also be looking to move on from LG. In its Horizon OS announcement it revealed that the excellent Quest operating system will be coming to Asus, Lenovo and Xbox headsets.
LG’s absence from this list initially suggested that its Meta collaboration might be focused on sharing display technology for a Quest Pro 2 or Quest 4. But these new reports suggest Meta could instead be looking to supplant an LG Horizon OS headset with third-party alternatives.
An uncertain, yet exciting XR era
Whether LG and Meta do end up exploring those previously announced "extended reality (XR) ventures", we’re in an interesting new era for XR hardware.
We’ve gone from Meta comfortably ruling the roost – at least in terms of standalone hardware and popularity – to it facing competition from some of tech’s biggest players.
The Apple Vision Pro is already here, and other devices that could be en route include a Google and Samsung XR headset, a Sony XR device (that isn't PSVR 2) and maybe an LG x Amazon collab project, not to mention the Horizon OS devices we mentioned earlier.
More choice and more competition is always going to be a blessing to those of us wanting to find the best VR headset for our own specific needs. So while Meta might not get LG's OLED panels for its next project, some promising headsets are still in the pipeline for 2024 and beyond.
