Meta plans to shelve Portal project

It’s been a bruising week for Meta: after announcing the company’s first mass layoffs on Wednesday, it’s been reported(Opens in a new window) the tech giant is abandoning its smart display projects altogether.

Meta executives spelled out plans to kill off the company’s Portal smart display business and halt two remaining unreleased smartwatch projects at a Friday town hall meeting, The Verge(Opens in a new window) reports.

The company already pivoted away from making Portal devices for consumers in June, in addition to having already pulled the plug on its dual-camera smartwatch, code-named “Milan.”

The cuts come as Meta refocuses on the development of metaverse technologies amid a global slowdown in advertising sales(Opens in a new window), stiff competition from TikTok, and an adverse financial impact from Apple’s privacy-focused tracking permissions.

In a letter(Opens in a new window) to employees on Wednesday, Meta announced 11,000 job cuts, which amount to 13% of its total workforce. It marks the first mass layoffs in the company’s 18-year history and is the largest volume of employees expected to lose their jobs at a major technology corporation.

Portal was launched in 2018 when Meta was still called Facebook. It arrived amid an already busy smart speaker/display market. Amazon debuted its Alexa-powered speaker Echo in 2014, while Google Home (now Nest) had launched in 2016. PCmag