Meta Reportedly Shelves Portal, Smartwatches

It’s been a bruising week for Meta: after announcing the company’s first mass layoffs on Wednesday, it’s been reported(Opens in a new window) the tech giant is abandoning its smart display projects altogether.

According to Verge(Opens in a new window), at a town hall meeting on Friday Meta executives spelled out plans to kill off the company’s Portal smart display business and halt two remaining unreleased smartwatch projects.

The company already made the decision(Opens in a new window) to pivot away from making Portal devices for consumers in June, in addition to having already pulled the plug(Opens in a new window) on its dual-camera smartwatch, code-named “Milan”. 

The cuts come as Meta refocuses on the development of metaverse technologies amid a global slowdown in advertising sales(Opens in a new window), stiff competition from TikTok(Opens in a new window), and an adverse financial impact from Apple’s privacy-focused tracking permissions(Opens in a new window). 

In a letter(Opens in a new window) to employees on Wednesday, Meta announced 11,000 job cuts which amount to 13% of its total workforce. It marks the first mass layoffs in the company’s 18 year history and is the largest volume of employees expected to lose their jobs at a major technology corporation.

Portal was launched in 2018 when Facebook’s parent company was still called Facebook. It arrived amid an already busy smart speaker/display market. Amazon debuted its Alexa-powered speaker Echo in 2014, while Google Home (now Nest) had launched in 2016.

If you still want a Portal, you’d better act fast: a banner on Portal’s official website(Opens in a new window) reads Meta Portal TV, 10” and GO are available until Dec. 31, “while supplies last”. It’s possible to buy a Portal for as little as $67.99 on Amazon(Opens in a new window) (its list price is $179). 

We reviewed the Portal Go last year, and said “the Facebook Portal Go is a unique smart display with a built-in battery and a handle so you can easily move it from room to room, but it also comes with some surprising limitations.”