The consumer versions of Meta's Portal video-calling gear are scheduled to be discontinued, and the company intends to refocus its product line on commercial applications such as conference calling in their place.
This shift in approach, which was first revealed by The Information and acknowledged to The Verge by a person familiar with the matter, arises as Meta is reevaluating its aspirational hardware plans in light of investor concerns regarding the company's spending of billions of dollars on projects that have not yet paid off financially. A representative from Meta did not want to comment, so they refused.
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An Overview of Portal
In 2018, the Portal line made its debut with two monitors that were designed specifically to function as video calling stations. They also supported applications for activities like as listening to music on Spotify and viewing videos on the Food Network. But the displays' utility was limited, and their link to Facebook, which at the time was dealing with the repercussions of the Cambridge Analytica incident, did not give a lot of confidence as to the safety of bringing a connected camera into your house.
Even though other iterations, such as the portable Portal Go, have been made available after the first launch, the original product was never a commercial success. According to The Information, the research company IDC expects that Meta will sell 800,000 Portals in 2021. This would represent less than one percent of the worldwide smart speakers and displays market. At the moment, Meta offers a total of four different Portal devices, ranging in price from $99 for a TV-connected camera to $349 for an intelligent display.
Featured image: Meta
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