Meta’s New Specs | The Motley Fool

In this podcast, Motley Fool analyst Jason Moser and host Ricky Mulvey discuss:

• Updates from Meta Platforms‘ Meta Connect 2024.
• Use cases for augmented reality glasses
• New details about Southwest Airlines‘ overhaul.

Then, Brookfield Corporation CFO Nick Goodman joins Motley Fool analyst Buck Hartzell to discuss how he thinks about capital allocation.

Ricky Mulvey: The headset race continues. You’re listening to Motley Fool Money. I’m Ricky Mulvey, joined today by Jason Moser. Jason, how you doing, man?

Jason Moser: Hey, Ricky, I’m doing well. How about you?

Ricky Mulvey: I’m doing pretty well.

Jason Moser: Good. We had a developer conference yesterday. That gives us some fodder to talk about. Did you forget that Meta was a metaverse company? Did you forget about that?

Ricky Mulvey: No, I didn’t, but I tell you, it does seem like the metaverses taken a little bit of a back scene here to AI recently which I reckon is understandable.

Jason Moser: It is back.

Ricky Mulvey: Yes.

Jason Moser: Connect conference, we got some AR/VR updates, some artificial intelligence announcements that I think are pretty interesting to parse through. Most significant was when Mr. Zuckerberg went onstage and showed a prototype of glasses called the Orion. Maybe a little bit of a response to Apple there. This thing does not have a battery pack, and you can see the outside world with holograms overlaid on what you’re seeing, early reviews from the journalists who are allowed early access to go see this product, have been very positive, though I want that qualifier in there. What was your impression? Are you buying the hype around the Orion?

Ricky Mulvey: Well, I’ve said it before. I really am fascinated by the technology. I think the technology itself is borderline magic. For me, Orion, it’s the next logical step. I think we’ve always talked about form factor being one of the big challenges here in regard to headsets and immersive technology. This is definitely a step in the right direction. I think the remaining challenge still remains though use cases. As technology does, the form factor will continue to come down over time. Again, this is a great step in the right direction. But I think ultimately still begs the question of the use case. That hopefully will develop in time. It’s just not as obvious today in regard to the mass consumer, and ultimately that is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow as it pertains to these types of headsets.

Jason Moser: Everything’s a trade off. You lose the immersive gaming world. There’s videos of Zuckerberg playing Pong with the journalists. You get maybe one of those we sports things, but you’re not getting inside the world of Batman and inside Gotham, which is the game that’s being released the Meta quest that’s getting out there. But to your point on use cases, the thing that they are trying to plug is productivity. You don’t need to sit at your computer with a keyboard and stare in at the screen. We’re going to broadcast the screen on your desk. Or when I see this, the real use case, not being sarcastic is if you’re traveling to another country. You can get everything translated for you, you get a little more context. But for now, my lighter brain is struggling to think of more use cases for these holographic glasses.

Ricky Mulvey: I think the language barrier I think is a tremendous use case. I think going back to my time, we lived in Cairo Egypt for three years in Astana Kazakhstan for two. Dealing with the Arabic and Russian languages was an interesting challenge for us. If you’re in a place where you’re walking down the street and you’re looking at these street signs written in Arabic, and ultimately, you can have that translated to English. That to me is actually a very compelling use case. I tend to agree with you on the productivity side, though, it’s a noble idea, but it’s hard for me to see it today at least at the mass use case level. It makes me think a little bit about the argument for self driving cars. One of the arguments being that, well, now your car is driving for you and therefore, you can be more productive.

I’d be willing to bet that most people are just sitting in the back seat of that car. Playing games on their phone or social network and whatever that may be. I’m not sure about the productivity thing there. Now, on the flip side, there are plenty of industrial AR use cases that I think can indeed increase productivity. When you think about things like safety, training or in the field operations, we’re already seeing that in play today, but those are obviously still somewhat specialized in nature. When you look at what consumers want from immersive technology from AR/VR, or things like that, surveys clearly indicate that most customers are interested in using this technology to enhance experiences in things like concerts, gaming, and absolutely some educational implications as well.