New form factors for Portal video chat devices are coming this fall, Facebook VP of AR/VR Andrew “Boz” Bosworth says
KEY POINTS — Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, Facebook vice president of AR/VR, spoke on stage at the Code Conference in Phoenix. — A LinkedIn photo of Facebook exec Andrew “Boz” Bosworth.
Context & Ripple Effects
Portal began as a single bet: an Echo Show-like video chat device with a screen and camera planned for a $499 second-half-2018 ship. Six months ago Facebook reset the team, hiring former Google AR/VR engineering lead Ryan Cairns to run Portal while Rafa Camargo moved over to AR/VR hardware.
Now Andrew Bosworth — who has overseen all of Facebook's consumer hardware, Oculus included, since his expanded remit in 2017 — says new Portal form factors arrive this fall. The move signals the device line is becoming a family rather than one product, and it sits inside the same hardware organization now running Project Aria's ~100-tester AR glasses research.
First-order effects
- Portal moves from a lone $499-class screen device to a multi-form-factor lineup by fall, giving Facebook more price points and use cases against Amazon's Echo Show in the smart-display category.
Second-order effects
- A broader Portal family gives Facebook's camera-equipped hardware a larger installed base — the same camera-and-assistant surface area its AR glasses work depends on, with Bosworth's org feeding learnings from Portal into Project Aria testing.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Facebook is building a consumer hardware ladder — smart displays today, AR glasses research and eventually Ray-Ban-partnered glasses tomorrow — turning a social software company into a device maker with its own distribution channel to users' homes and faces.
The trend: Facebook is using Portal as the near-term proving ground for a deliberate expansion from social apps into consumer hardware, with Bosworth's organization staging the path toward AR glasses.