Meta's Quest 3 demand continues to weaken, could result in higher losses: analyst
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Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) only showed off its Quest 3 mixed reality late last month, but demand has likely declined "significantly," which could result in higher losses than anticipated, an analyst said on Thursday.
In a blog post, TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that the initial shipment forecast for the Quest 3 in the second-half of the year was more than 7M units. But due to "anticipated weaker demand," the current shipment forecast has been cut to 2M to 2.5M units, with forecasts for 2024 at around 1M units.
Kuo added that the new Ray-Ban smart glasses that were also announced at Meta's Connect conference are only forecast to ship roughly 1.5M units over the lifecycle of the entire product, below the 2M that its predecessor shipped.
"Itâs worth noting that the Ray-Ban Stories Smart Glasses ended up shipping only about 300,000â400,000 units, significantly below expectations," Kuo wrote in the post. "More worryingly, the actual number of active users of Ray-Ban Stories Smart Glasses was less than 50,000."
As such, he said that there is the potential for losses from Meta's (META) hardware business to exceed projections and "warrant investorsâ attention."
Meta (META) shares fell 1.5% in early trading on Thursday.

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