India’s largest mobile network is in talks with Meta about launching a Horizon OS headset in the country, The Information reports.
The outlet cites “three people with knowledge of the situation” as saying the talks are happening but aren’t at the stage where any deal has been finalized.
Horizon OS is Meta’s new name for the Quest operating system, which it plans to let third-party companies use in future headsets.
So far, ASUS and Lenovo have confirmed their intentions to release Horizon OS headsets.
LG reportedly once planned a Horizon OS headset for 2025, but that deal appears to be heavily delayed or perhaps even canceled.
In addition to its mobile network, Jio also runs an e-commerce platform, digital payments service, and an ecosystem of app-based services including a messaging platform, streaming service, and gaming platform.
Meta took a 10% stake in Jio back in 2020 as part of a deal designed to integrate some of Jio’s e-commerce services into WhatsApp. The controlling shareholder of Jio, Mukesh Amani, was also Mark Zuckerberg’s personal friend. Zuckerberg and his wife attended Ambani’s son’s wedding earlier this year.
Meta Horizon OS Will Run On Headsets From ASUS & Lenovo
Meta is rebranding its Quest software platform to Meta Horizon OS and opening it up to third-party headset makers, including ASUS and Lenovo.
Notably, Jio currently partners with Google for a 4G Android phone it sells for the equivalent of around $50. Jio VR could use a similar approach, offering affordable hardware preloaded with Jio’s services. Jio uses a low-end chipet in its smartphone, and it is possible that the headset will use the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1 chipset from Quest 2 to achieve the same result. This would limit the amount of content
that can be run by the headset over time, as well as its mixed-reality capabilities. However, these compromises may be necessary in order to make the Indian market successful.