Mark Zuckerberg quest flex backfired on the CEO of Meta, Hubris is stated to come back before the fall, and the swagger with which Mark Zuckerberg dunked on Apple’s $three,500 Vision Pro this week is giving critics an acute case of déjà vu.
In an Instagram put up, the Meta founder on Tuesday brushed off the premium blended fact headset as inferior to his own Quest three blended truth headset both in charge and overall performance, calling the latter the “higher product, duration.”
But Zuck’s bravado is unflatteringly being compared to the overly hasty obituary for the iPhone written by using rival Steve Ballmer when the progressive tool first released nearly 17 years in the past.
“There’s no threat that the iPhone goes to get any considerable market proportion,” the ex–Microsoft CEO famously predicted in 2007 in a quote that has considering elderly very poorly.
Like Zuckerberg, Ballmer in the main took issue with the charge tag of the smartphone, ignoring the capacity cost it could offer clients via a thriving digital app economy.
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“Five hundred bucks? Fully sponsored with a plan? I said this is the maximum costly cellphone within the international!” Ballmer stated in a separate interview. “And it doesn’t attraction to enterprise customers, as it doesn’t have a keyboard—which makes it not a superb email system.”
The “Steve Ballmer iPhone video” is 16 years vintage. Worth looking the overall 2-minute clip. I genuinely suppose it got worse as the video went on. Ballmer implied a Motorola Q could do the entirety an iPhone can do for simply $ninety nine. Sounds acquainted?Percent.Twitter.Com/Rf2c7SmjA2
— Neil Cybart (@neilcybart) February 14, 2024
In Zuckerberg’s latest criticism of Apple’s headset, the Meta founder similarly trashed everything from the Vision Pro’s layout to its consolation and practicality in addition to its fee, at seven instances the fee of his Quest three.
“Is Zuckerberg channeling Steve Ballmer by trying to dis Apple?” asked Glen Kacher, founder and chief funding officer at Palo Alto–primarily based wealth supervisor Light Street Capital.
Is the Quest toward Nokia or BlackBerry?
Ballmer in the end went on to regret his lack of foresight, which he blamed on a deeply ingrained cultural hostility closer to the enterprise’s enlargement into the hardware space.
Like looking a 2007 Nokia fan telling you iPhone is not that superior due to the fact you can do the identical with Symbian.
He may want to’ve just said not anything, taken the best matters of visionOS, add eye monitoring again and be a king. Now he’s were given his personal Ballmer iPhone video. Surprising misstep https://t.Co/Z4Ac4sR0Pl
— Tina Debove Nigro ᯅ (@tina__nigro) February 14, 2024
According to the previous Microsoft boss, senior management’s thinking at the time became very an awful lot anchored inside the easily delineated business model that separated chips, system, and software program makers from non-public computers. The business enterprise didn’t count on the shift toward quit-to-cease vertical integration that Apple popularized inside the cellular space.
The evaluation with Ballmer isn’t absolutely accurate, though. While the Microsoft boss said his biggest mistake become restricting the organization’s consciousness to Windows Mobile in preference to entering the handset enterprise in advance with a true iPhone competitor, Zuckerberg’s problem is simply the other: He already has the hardware—it’s simply now not catching on.
A closer analogy is the opportunity that Meta’s Quest is the Nokia or BlackBerry of combined truth headsets, a mass-market tool that lacks enough compelling content and beneficial programs as it failed to preserve pace with innovation in the tech industry.
It became simplest with this month’s arrival of the Apple Vision Pro that the technology all at once gained broader pop culture prominence, in a blow to the Quest three that released most effective 4 months in advance.
Zuckerberg did receive some ethical support in response to his Ballmer-esque video, although.
“He’s one of the most extraordinary CEOs there is,” wrote Kaushik Subramanian, a partner at early level investor EQT Ventures, who once worked for the Meta founder. “Don’t bet in opposition to Zuck!”