Mark Zuckerberg has staked tens of billions of dollars on the belief that virtual and mixed reality will define the next era of computing. But the centerpiece of that vision — Meta’s social platform Horizon Worlds — has struggled mightily to attract and retain users since its public launch. Now, with plans to expand Horizon Worlds to mobile devices by 2026, Meta is making what may be its most consequential bet yet: that bringing the platform beyond headsets and onto the smartphones already in billions of pockets will finally deliver the mass adoption that has remained stubbornly elusive.
According to Business Insider, Meta is preparing a significant push to bring Horizon Worlds to mobile platforms, a move that would untether the social experience from the company’s Quest headsets and open it up to a vastly larger audience. The strategy reflects a growing internal acknowledgment that virtual reality hardware alone cannot generate the user base necessary to sustain a thriving social platform — and that Meta needs to meet people where they already are.
A Platform in Search of an Audience
Horizon Worlds launched in late 2021 with considerable fanfare and even more considerable expectations. Zuckerberg positioned it as the embryonic version of the metaverse — a persistent, shared virtual space where people could socialize, play games, attend events, and eventually work. The company rebranded itself from Facebook to Meta in October 2021, signaling that the metaverse was not a side project but the company’s defining strategic direction.
The reality has been far less grand. Internal documents and reports have repeatedly shown that Horizon Worlds has struggled with low user counts, poor retention, and a user experience that many found buggy and uninspiring. At various points, even Meta’s own employees were reportedly reluctant to spend time in the platform. The virtual worlds created by users — a key part of Meta’s vision for a creator-driven environment — have often felt empty, with few people populating them at any given time. Meta’s Reality Labs division, which oversees Horizon Worlds and the Quest hardware line, has reported staggering losses: more than $16 billion in 2023 alone, following $13.7 billion in 2022, according to the company’s earnings reports.
The Mobile Imperative
The decision to expand to mobile is not simply an incremental product update — it represents a fundamental rethinking of how Horizon Worlds can achieve scale. As of early 2025, Meta has sold an estimated 20 to 25 million Quest headsets cumulatively, a respectable figure for a consumer electronics category but a fraction of the billions of smartphones in active use worldwide. By bringing Horizon Worlds to iOS and Android, Meta would dramatically expand the platform’s addressable market.
This approach mirrors strategies employed by other companies in the spatial computing space. Roblox, for instance, built its massive user base primarily through mobile and desktop access before expanding to consoles and VR. Epic Games’ Fortnite similarly thrives across multiple platforms. The lesson from these successes is clear: social platforms and interactive experiences gain traction when they reduce friction for entry, and there is no lower-friction device than the phone already in a user’s hand. Meta appears to have absorbed this lesson, even if it took longer than some analysts expected.
Zuckerberg’s Long Game and Wall Street’s Patience
Meta’s metaverse spending has been a persistent source of tension with investors. During the company’s difficult 2022, when its stock price plummeted by more than 60%, the scale of Reality Labs losses became a lightning rod for criticism. Zuckerberg responded by declaring 2023 a “year of efficiency,” cutting more than 20,000 jobs across the company and trimming costs. But notably, he did not significantly pull back on metaverse investment. Reality Labs spending has continued at a pace that would represent the entire operating budget of many Fortune 500 companies.
Wall Street has, for now, granted Zuckerberg a degree of latitude — largely because Meta’s core advertising business has roared back. The company’s stock recovered dramatically in 2023 and 2024, driven by strong revenue growth from its family of apps (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger) and by investor enthusiasm around Meta’s artificial intelligence initiatives. With the stock trading near all-time highs, the financial pressure on Reality Labs has eased somewhat, giving Zuckerberg room to continue funding his long-term vision. But the implicit bargain is that the metaverse investments must eventually show tangible progress toward commercial viability.
What a Mobile Horizon Worlds Might Look Like
Details about the mobile version of Horizon Worlds remain limited, but several possibilities have emerged from Meta’s public statements and industry reporting. A mobile version would likely offer a simplified, 2D or 2.5D interface — similar to how Roblox presents its 3D worlds on a phone screen — rather than attempting to replicate the full immersive VR experience. Users could interact with virtual spaces, attend events, communicate with friends, and engage with creator-built content, all through a touchscreen interface.
The challenge for Meta will be making the mobile experience compelling enough to attract users who have no prior interest in VR. If Horizon Worlds on mobile feels like a watered-down version of the headset experience, it risks being dismissed as irrelevant. But if Meta can design a mobile experience that stands on its own merits — offering social features, entertainment, and creator content that rival existing mobile platforms — it could serve as a powerful funnel, drawing users into the broader Meta spatial computing environment and potentially converting some into Quest headset buyers.
The Creator Economy Question
Central to Horizon Worlds’ long-term viability is whether it can build a thriving creator economy. Meta has invested heavily in tools that allow users to build virtual worlds, games, and experiences within the platform. The company has also experimented with monetization features, allowing creators to sell virtual items and access to premium experiences. But the creator economy depends on audience size — creators go where the users are, and users go where the content is. This chicken-and-egg problem has plagued Horizon Worlds from the start.
A successful mobile launch could break this cycle. If mobile access brings a significant influx of users, creators would have greater incentive to invest time and effort in building content for the platform. Meta has already shown a willingness to fund creators directly through grants and incentive programs, but organic, market-driven creator growth — fueled by a large and engaged user base — would be a far more sustainable engine. The company’s experience building creator economies on Instagram and Facebook gives it institutional knowledge in this area, though the dynamics of a 3D social platform differ meaningfully from those of a 2D feed-based app.
Competition Is Not Standing Still
Meta is not operating in a vacuum. Apple launched its Vision Pro headset in early 2024, bringing a formidable competitor into the spatial computing hardware market. While the Vision Pro’s $3,499 price tag has limited its consumer adoption, Apple’s entry validates the category and raises the stakes for Meta. Meanwhile, platforms like Roblox, Fortnite, and Rec Room continue to build large, engaged communities that overlap significantly with Meta’s target audience for Horizon Worlds.
There are also emerging competitors in Asia, including ByteDance’s Pico division, which has been developing VR hardware and software for the Chinese market with ambitions to expand globally. Google, which largely exited the consumer VR space after the failure of Daydream, has shown renewed interest in mixed reality through its partnership with Samsung on the upcoming Project Moohan headset. The competitive field is growing more crowded, and Meta’s window to establish Horizon Worlds as the dominant social VR platform is not unlimited.
The Stakes for Meta’s Identity
The 2026 mobile expansion of Horizon Worlds carries significance that extends beyond quarterly earnings or user metrics. It is a test of the thesis that justified Meta’s entire corporate rebrand. When Zuckerberg changed the company’s name, he was making a public declaration that the future of social connection would be spatial, immersive, and three-dimensional. If Horizon Worlds — even with the advantage of mobile distribution — fails to gain meaningful traction, it will raise profound questions about whether that thesis was premature, misguided, or simply ahead of its time.
For now, Meta has the financial resources and the strategic resolve to keep pushing forward. The company generated more than $134 billion in revenue in 2024, giving it an enormous war chest to fund speculative bets. But money alone cannot will a platform into cultural relevance. The mobile expansion of Horizon Worlds will need to demonstrate that Meta can build something people actually want to use — not because they own a headset, but because the experience itself is worth their time. That is the challenge Zuckerberg and his team must answer, and the next 18 months will go a long way toward determining whether the metaverse vision was prescient or premature.