Meta just pulled the plug on Portal — and its smartwatch plans

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Portal to be abandoned, and the Meta Smartwatch will likely never reach store shelves

Image of a Meta Portal device with the screen on, kept on a table
(Image credit: Meta)

Last week, Meta was forced to slash its workforce by around 13%, meaning over 11,000 employees were let go. 

While the departmental breakdown wasn’t revealed, Zuckerberg’s blog post on the news stated that the company would prioritise “high priority growth areas” including the AI discovery engine, advertising and the metaverse.

While it’s easy to assume that cancelling an unreleased product won’t be that big a hit to the company’s bottom line, that underestimates exactly how much time and money Meta had already put into it. The smartwatch concept was reportedly far enough along for there to be at least two generations planned.

According to the Reuters report, those working on the smartwatch will be relocated to work on augmented reality glasses, where Meta looks to build on its Ray-Ban Stories — another device that allows the easy sharing of video to Instagram and Facebook.

facebook/meta watch leaked design with camera notch on blue background

Meta smartwatch leaked design (Image credit: Bloomberg/Steve Moser)

As for Portal, Meta had already retreated somewhat from its original aim, and since June had been targeted purely at business users. But even this wasn’t enough to save it, with Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth reportedly saying it would take Portal too long to become a major player in the space (an earlier Information report pegged it as having just 1% of the total market). 

“It was just going to take so long, and take so much investment to get into the enterprise segment, it felt like the wrong way to invest your time and money,” he is quoted as saying. It’s unclear if this means Meta will immediately stop selling Portal and when support for the device will end. 

Unmentioned in the report is Meta’s Quest line of virtual reality headsets. But, presumably, the Quest division is safe as long as the metaverse remains a priority for the company. And for now, despite general industry scepticism and disinterested employees, that appears to be the case.

Alan Martin
Alan Martin

Freelance contributor Alan has been writing about tech for over a decade, covering phones, drones and everything in between. Previously Deputy Editor of tech site Alphr, his words are found all over the web and in the occasional magazine too. When not weighing up the pros and cons of the latest smartwatch, you'll probably find him tackling his ever-growing games backlog. He also handles all the Wordle coverage on Tom's Guide and has been playing the addictive NYT game for the last several years in an effort to keep his streak forever intact.