Mark Zuckerberg says he never expected people to be walking around wearing VR headsets — that's what the Ray Ban glasses are for
- Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan had a wide-ranging conversation with podcast host Andrew Huberman on Monday.
- Zuckerberg said a world full of people walking around in VR headsets is "certainly not the future that I'm hoping we get to."
- Instead, his goal is for the AR glasses to become a smart phone replacement.
Some people are filming themselves getting a cup of coffee or doing chores while wearing Meta's new virtual reality headsets, but even Mark Zuckerberg says that's not what they're for.
"That's certainly not the future that I'm hoping we get to," Zuckerberg told neuroscientist and podcast host Andrew Huberman during an episode of Huberman's show that aired on Monday.
In the conversation, Zuckerberg said he viewed Meta's new Quest 3 VR headsets as a successor to people's desktop-based workstations. But he's not seeing them as an alternative for smartphones.
Going out and about with wearable technology is where Meta's revamped AR Ray-Ban smart glasses, introduced in September at the company's Connect conference, come in.
"These AR glasses are going to be like your phone. You will be able to wear it for a lot of the day and interact with it very frequently," Zuckerberg told Huberman about the glasses, which began shipping out on October 17, with prices starting at $299.
For context, Meta's revamped AR Ray-Bans are the successor to its "Ray-Ban Stories," which were launched in September 2021. The device comes equipped with a camera and small built-in speakers, allowing users to play music and even take phone calls.
Zuckerberg's comments highlight Meta's vision for the future of wearable technology as the company continues to make a monumental bet on the metaverse, despite the bet on AR and VR technologies proving to be a lossmaking one to date.
Last year, Reality Labs, the Meta division responsible for metaverse research, posted a $13.7 billion loss, filings show. And the unit reported a $3.7 billion operating loss in the third quarter of this year, per Meta's earnings announcement on Wednesday.
But that hasn't stopped Zuckerberg from pursuing his long-held, lofty ambitions for wearable tech.
Last year, one former Meta employee told the Verge's Alex Heath that Zuckerberg's ego is intertwined with the glasses. "He wants it to be an iPhone moment," the unnamed source told Heath.
Representatives for Meta did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment sent outside regular business hours.