According to a report from South Korean outlet The Korea Economic Daily (Korean), Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be in-country this week to finalize a deal with LG regarding a previously rumored competitor to Apple Vision Pro, which is reportedly set to be jointly built by the two companies for release in early 2025.
Citing unnamed industry sources, the report maintains Zuckerberg will be in South Korea to meet LG Electronics CEO William Cho on Wednesday, February 28th to discuss plans related to the joint development of XR headsets. Key executives from LG Group’s IT component subsidiaries are also said to be in attendance.
The report, which was first picked up by UploadVR, also alleges the two companies plan to release “the highest-performing XR headset in the first quarter of next year,” positioning it to compete with Apple Vision Pro.
These aren’t the first rumors to come out of Korea regarding a possible Meta-LG XR headset manufacturing partnership however. A separate report from South Korea’s Maekyung (Korean) in September maintained Meta and LG were planning on releasing two new headsets, a low-cost Quest model that will be priced at “less than $200” coming in 2024, and the presumed ‘Pro’ model Quest mentioned above.
South Korean tech outlet The Guru (Korean) reported in January 2024 that LG will release a commercially available XR headset as early as next year.
Whatever the case, Zuckerberg is currently in the neighborhood. According to jet tracker ZuckerbergJet on Instagram, Zuckerberg’s Gulfstream G650 private jet is in Tokyo, Japan, having landed there just two days ago.
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Reports aside, we really won’t know what’s on the horizon, although we already have a pretty good idea what a potential Quest Pro 2 could look like provided Meta really intends on going toe-to-toe with Apple.
Douglas Lanman, Senior Director of Display Systems at Reality Labs Research, held a guest lecture at the University of Arizona late last year wherein he talked at length about his own (re: not Meta’s) next-gen ‘Mirror Lake’ headset prototype. In it, Lanman explained that, with already available components, such a headset could include a bevy of wishlist items, such as holographic optics, multi-view eye-tracking, varifocal display, reverse-passthrough, and baked-in prescription.
Whether those things are actually go into a potential Quest Pro 2 is another matter, although if Meta wants to beat Apple at its own game, it’s certainly going to require some one-upmanship in both the hardware and software department.