What is Facebook Spending on XR?

Facebook says they have 10,000 employees working on XR, or about 1/6 of the company’s 58,604 employees.

I’ll do some simple math based on public information. I’ll include my notes in brackets if you want to try other variations or tell me where I’m wrong.

Using their public projections from Q1 2021, we might reasonably expect they spend about $6 billion on XR this year for salaries, hardware and overhead.

[ assuming 1/6 * 4 * (Q1’s “cost of revenue” + “R&D”) = $6B ]

Compensation alone for 10,000 mostly Silicon Valley employees could exceed $5B a year, depending on stock grants and overhead.

[ assuming $250k average salary, doubled to cover stock, benefits, overhead. ]

Hardware development costs more than software, especially when you have to outsource all of the fabrication and parts and you’re not at the top of the stack. Additional expensive acquisitions are likely. And I figure the net loss on HW sales could be over $1B already.

[ assuming $200 loss per unit, times 5 million units would be $1B ]

Why $200?

I don’t know for sure. But base units sell for $299, with $50 discounts cropping up. Stores may acquire these for $199 or less to cover their usual markup. Comparable headsets cost $600–800 without subsidies. Cell phones are in a similar price vs. technology ballpark, with different optics. I figure the likely “Cost of Goods Sold” for Quest is at…