Apple, Meta in ‘deep, philosophical competition’ over metaverse

Apple and Meta Platforms are in a “very deep, philosophical competition” according to Mark Zuckerberg, according to The Verge.

The news outlet, citing a recording of an internal all-hands meeting, noted that the Meta Platforms (META) Chief Executive shows that the two companies are set to go head-to-head for augmented and virtual reality technologies, but it’s not clear which approach will work.

“This is a competition of philosophies and ideas, where they believe that by doing everything themselves and tightly integrating that they build a better consumer experience,” Zuckerberg reportedly said, adding that competition will allow for “a much larger ecosystem to exist.”

However, Zuckerberg said it’s not clear whether an open or closed ecosystem will work, citing the fact that Windows was able to gain more scale than Mac in PCS, but iOS has had the edge with developers over Android.

Meta’s (META) Zuckerberg said the company is selling devices at cost or a slight subsidy — though it recently raised the price of its Quest 2 by $100 — and used the all-hands to take a shot at Apple (AAPL), saying the “bottom line is our business is not primarily taking a premium on the devices.”

“So yeah, Apple is going to be a competitor,” Zuckerberg continued. “I think that that’s pretty clear, but it’s actually a very deep competitor. It’s not just [that] they have a device that has some more features than us. It’s a very deep, philosophical competition about what direction the internet should go in.”

Apple and Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Seeking Alpha.

Meta (META) is scheduled to report second-quarter results after the close of trading on Wednesday, while Apple (AAPL) will report fiscal third-quarter results tomorrow. Seeking Alpha