Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has built its first physical store in Burlingame, California, to display its devices, such as virtual and augmented reality goggles and glasses.
The store, which opened to the public on Monday, is for those interested in trying out Ray-Ban Stories, Meta’s AR glasses and sunglasses, as well as the Portal video, chatting device, and Oculus virtual reality headsets.
Customers must still order the glasses from Ray-Ban, but they can purchase the rest of the merchandise at the store.
“It’s a very concrete step from moving away from social media and ads that mislead people and elections and spying and data and all those things to a very physical representation of clean, classy, well-designed, cool hardware that makes you go, ah,” said Omar Akhtar, research director at Altimeter, a technology investment firm.
Akhtar said he “didn’t believe in virtual reality” until he sat and tried on the Oculus headgear for the first time, and he expects others who can check it out would feel the same way. In Silicon Valley, Apple pioneered actual retail storefronts, and Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, is likely looking to recreate some of that success.
“The truth of it is that physical things never went away and they’re never going to go away,” Akhtar said. “Everybody realizes that even if we are going to step into the virtual world, we’re going to need to access it with hardware.”
also read:
Lenovo unveils new Yoga Slim 9 and 7 series laptops with AMD and Intel’s latest processors
