Facebook’s smart home displays under the Portal brand were never as popular as competing products from Amazon and Google, with people likely trusting the social network much less than the other two big tech companies. After years of trying to break into the market, Facebook (or Meta, as its parent company is now called) is ready to give up on the consumer market completely, focusing on business customers instead.

According to a report from The Information, the company is restructuring some of its hardware endeavors, including its AR/VR division. As part of this process, the company is also getting ready to discontinue its consumer-focused Portal products, refocusing its efforts on business use cases instead. While this might be a surprising direction to head to, it actually looks like Portals were heavily used by businesses during the beginning of the pandemic, and Meta likely sees this as an opportunity to grow in this market. In fact, Meta recently started advertising its Portal products as perfect fits for hybrid work models.

Meta's 2019 Portal lineup

In any case, Meta had never appeared to take this side hustle too seriously for consumers. From the get-go, the company partnered with Amazon to make its devices Alexa-powered, essentially partnering with a potential rival from the get-go. It probably also didn’t help Facebook that it used metadata from video calls such as the call length and the frequency of calls to further build out targeted advertising profiles of its users, making users fear for their privacy even more — especially with many people wondering if Facebook actually knows what we're thinking about.

The report comes shortly after Meta reportedly canceled its dual-camera smartwatch, which was met with criticism even before it ever became official. The product was meant as an alternative to Meta’s Ray Ban smart glasses, joining the lineup of Meta’s smart accessories. The device was supposed to run a custom OS with support for notification sync and Facebook sharing options. With Meta increasingly expanding beyond the social network business, it’s clear that it has to go through some growing pains and loose projects that don’t take it in the right direction.