Meta and Apple

In a recent speech to his staff, Mark Zuckerberg described Apple as Meta's main rival in the meta-universe race. The announcement appeared on The Verge's website. Zuckerberg believes that whoever wins this contest will determine the direction in which the internet will evolve.

According to the head of Meta, the competition between the companies is not so much about technology as it is about distribution of services. Thus, Zuckerberg sees his brainchild as the Android counterpart of the meta-universe world, which will be free and open to developers. Whereas he sees Apple's meta-universe as a kind of elitist and closed product like iOS.

Mark Zuckerberg said: "It's a competition of philosophies and ideas in which they [Apple] believe that by doing everything themselves and integrating tightly, they create a better consumer experience."

Another reason why Mark Zuckerberg sees Apple as a competitor is that the US IT giants had previously created an open standards group for the meta universe, which in addition to Meta included Microsoft, Epic Games and more, but not Tim Cook's company.

According to the head of Meta, Apple could unveil its version of the meta-universe as early as this year.

It's also worth noting that Apple and Meta have never been on the same page. The former is currently costing the latter billions of dollars a year in lost advertising revenue on iOS thanks to its prompt, which asks people if they want a third-party app to track them for display ads.

Zuckerberg's remarks suggest that while he is trying to find a way out of Apple's control in the mobile space, the two tech giants will be fighting for years to come.