The social media giant says it has merely “paused” the programme, but the chances of those headsets ever shipping now look vanishingly small.

About a year and a half ago, Meta made a big song and dance about rebranding the Quest operating system as Horizon OS and opening it up to outside hardware makers.

At the time, it was pitched as an industry-shifting move, with Meta lining up partners to build alternative headsets running its software.

Asus and Lenovo were named as the first brave volunteers. Asus was supposedly cooking up an all-new performance gaming headset, while Lenovo was tasked with a mixed-reality kit aimed at productivity, learning, and entertainment.

Neither is now expected to see daylight.

Meta confirmed it has frozen the entire third-party Horizon OS effort. Meta spokesperson said, “We have paused the program to focus on building the world-class first-party hardware and software needed to advance the VR market. We’re committed to this for the long term and will revisit opportunities for 3rd-party device partnerships as the category evolves.”

Reality Labs, Meta’s AI and XR cash incinerator, is in the middle of a priorities reshuffle after years of eye-watering losses. The company recently admitted it needs to get serious about usability and polish, hiring a former design lead from the Fruity Cargo Cult Apple to help tidy up its wearables. Apple's own efforts in this area, though, have not exactly been great.

Meta has told staff it is now focused on making the Reality Labs business sustainable, taking longer to ship products and pushing quality harder than it did under frantic release cycles.

That rethink has reportedly delayed its Vision Pro rival until 2027 and opened the door to higher prices on future gaming headsets.

Competition is tightening, with Vision Pro already on sale and Android XR looming as a far more credible platform than Meta expected. Meta once talked loudly about becoming the Android of XR, positioning Horizon OS as an open alternative to Job’s Mob’s tightly controlled visionOS. Letting partners build Horizon OS hardware was central to that plan.

The problem is that Android XR does a better job and comes with the weight of the Google Play ecosystem behind it. At the same time, Horizon OS has to make do with a much narrower app catalogue focused almost entirely on immersive experiences.

That is a hard sell against app stores packed with millions of widely used applications. There was a more basic flaw baked into the Horizon OS partner idea from the start, namely, pricing.

Meta sells its headsets at cost or possibly below cost, gambling on recouping the investment through software and services. That lets it undercut almost anyone on price. If you are Asus or Lenovo, relying purely on hardware margins, competing with the platform owner flogging subsidised headsets is a mug’s game.

From that angle, Android XR looks like a much friendlier place to land. It has a massive app ecosystem and, crucially, Google is not yet undercutting its partners with aggressively priced first-party hardware.

Meta may call this a pause, but for Horizon OS headsets from Asus and Lenovo, it already smells like the end.