Meta does not have the right to buy Within Unlimited, a start-up specializing in virtual reality, believes the Federal Trade Commission (Federal Trade Commission or FTC) of the United States. The authority fears that Meta will gain market monopoly to the detriment of competition and consumers.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the American competition authority, has just filed a complaint against Meta. The regulator has decided to prevent the Californian giant from buying the start-up Within Unlimited. The Los Angeles-based company offers a virtual reality exercise app called Supernatural.
According to the FTC, Meta’s move represents a risk for competition in the virtual reality market. The takeover would risk putting the company in a dominant position.
“Instead of competing on the bottom, Meta is trying to buy its way to the top. […] Meta chose to buy its position in the market instead of earning it on its merits,” said John Newman, the FTC’s deputy director for competition.
As Authority points out, Meta is already a key player in the industry virtual reality. Mark Zuckerberg’s group already markets many VR products, such as Quest headsets, as part of the development of its metaverse, or metaverse, in French.
While waiting for Apple’s incursion, Meta is establishing itself as the leader in the VR headset sector, with 90% of the market share. The FTC recalls that the company already owns the VR game Beat Saber. The redemption would amount to reduce the supply of VR applicationswhich would harm consumers.
The FTC suggests that Meta reproduces the strategy that allowed it to become one of the giants of social networks. Fearing the emergence of competition, the group, then called Facebook, had bought WhatsApp and Instagram for colossal sums.
Read also: Meta considers Apple as its rival in the creation of the metaverse
Meta disputes
Meta challenged the FTC complaint in a press release published on its website. The company believes that the regulator is based solely on “ideology and speculation, not evidence”. Meta points out that Beat Saber is very different from Supernatural.
“Beat Saber and Supernatural are fundamentally different products with different user bases, different use cases, and different competitive dynamics,” says Meta.
Available through a subscription, Supernatural offers sports sessions staged like a video game in exotic environments. For its part, Beat Saber is a game of music and rhythm, where the player must slice cubes with luminous sabers.
Either way, Meta’s metaverse seems to be in bad shape. When publishing the group’s financial results, we learned that Reality Labs, the division dedicated to the metaverse, continues to lose money. Within a quarter, the division lost $2.81 billion.
Source :
FTC