Mark Zuckerberg appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast earlier this week, and he had a lot of words to say about Apple. In particular, the Meta chief targeted the company’s innovative streak and the cumbersome ecosystem weaved around it.
“They haven’t invented anything great in a while. It’s like Steve Jobs invented the iPhone, and now they’re just kind of sitting on it 20 years later,” Zuckerberg told Rogan.
Here’s the fun part. Meta — which went by the name Facebook not too long ago — tried to get a foothold in the phone market. And we’re not just talking about social media apps here, but actual hardware.
In 2011, the company partnered with HTC and launched two phones. The ChaCha was a QWERTY phone with a dedicated Facebook button at the button. The idea was to offer one-tap access to the Facebook social-verse.
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Then there was the HTC Salsa, which kept the “f” button but went for a regular full-screen slab format. Neither phone got a successor. Poor build, uninspiring internal hardware, and subpar camera experience were some of the issues that adopters faced.
Two years later, Zuckerberg again knocked at HTC’s doors and created a custom Android experience called Facebook Home. The software even received praise for its thoughtful design and clean looks on the HTC First smartphone.
Unfortunately, smartphone enthusiasts didn’t buy too much into the idea of a phone tied deeply into the social media fabric. Mind you, this was long before Facebook was deemed a ticking privacy bomb.
Setting aside the reasons for the failures, Facebook simply wasn’t deemed charming — or competent enough — to beat the rising tide of iPhones or even gain a foothold in the Android market.
Alright, maybe Zuckerberg is not salty about those failures. It seems he is genuinely concerned about Apple losing its innovation mojo. And in his opinion, that is taking a toll on the sales figures as well.
“I am not even sure they are selling more iPhones at this point,” he told Rogan. “I think part of it is that each generation doesn’t get that much better, so people are just taking longer to upgrade than they would before.”
The Meta chief is not entirely off the mark here. Apple has indeed lost its competitive edge to Chinese brands when it comes to smartphone innovations. But that hasn’t stopped the company from selling more phones.
Or even tablets, watches, or computers. Zuckerberg can’t quite claim that Facebook excelled in those categories, either. Meta’s best win in the XR hardware segment materialized only after it acquired Oculus for a couple of billion dollars.
In 2022, Meta reportedly canceled its ambitious smartwatch project, according to Bloomberg. The same year, Reuters reported that the short-lived Portal smart display line was also put on ice.
During the nearly three-hour-long interview with Rogan, Zuckerberg also touched upon Apple’s platform restrictions, using the AirPods as an example.
“They’ve just thoroughly hamstrung the ability for anyone else to build something that can connect to the iPhone in the same way,” he said.
Zuckerberg also broached the issue of Apple’s App Store fee structure, which has attracted its fair share of criticism and antitrust concerns.
“So, how are they making more money as a company? Well, they do it by basically, like, squeezing people,” referring to the 30% fee Apple charges for apps and in-app purchases distributed via the App Store.
Apple has loosened some of the restrictions — which include allowing external payment pipelines — following multiple investigations and Europe’s landmark Digital Markets Act (DMA) reforms.
The interview is worth a watch, especially in the wake of dramatic changes at Meta in the past few days. The company has ended its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts.
Meta has also ended its independent fact-checker system for Facebook and Instagram, aside from some questionable moderation changes, all of which have raised serious concerns.
