Calay News
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook), has declared that 2023 will be the “year of efficiency” at the company as it reels after suffering drastic layoffs and declining revenues. In addition, Meta faces an even bigger problem as its family of apps, which includes Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is being impacted by changes to Apple’s iOS operating system, which limits the ability of apps to track user behavior.
These iOS changes have had a significant impact on Meta’s ability to deliver personalized, targeted ads to iPhone users, resulting in an estimated $10 billion loss for the company, Meta reported in February 2022. In addition, the fight between Meta and Apple has intensified in recent years, as Apple CEO Tim Cook has criticized Facebook’s business model on several occasions, even declaring privacy a “human right.”
This situation is severely impacting Meta’s bottom line, as the company relies heavily on advertising revenue, which has declined due to changes in iOS and global political and economic uncertainty. In fact, Meta has slashed its online advertising budgets, as have many other technology companies.
To address these challenges, Meta is exploring new opportunities in virtual reality and the metaverse, with the goal of having a platform of its own. However, it is still unclear when and how these ambitions will be realized, and many analysts believe Meta needs to make significant changes to its advertising strategy so as not to rely on tracking user data or another operating system.
In the long term, Meta is looking to not only compete with Apple in the app and hardware space but also establish itself as a leader in the next computing platform by participating in the app layer and becoming the operating system. To achieve these goals, the company will have to overcome significant technological, regulatory, and data privacy challenges and prove that it can be a viable alternative to Apple in the digital ecosystem.
