VR App Developer Sues Meta Over Killing Deal Following Talks With Apple
Andre Elijah, the creator of the VR yoga app, has sued Meta for $353.2 million over antitrust claims.
- VR fitness app developer Andre Elijah has initiated a lawsuit against Meta over the termination of his project.
- Allegedly, Meta retaliated against the developer after he entered talks with Apple and ByteDance about bringing the app on their platforms as well.
A fitness app developer, Andre Elijah, has initiated a lawsuit against Meta Platforms over the abrupt termination of his project just days before his yoga app was to be launched. According to the lawsuit, the AEI Fitness app was set to be unveiled at the Meta Connect conference, which happened in September.
The developer has stated that canceling the app launch at the conference and scrapping the deal has lost his firm tens of millions of dollars in exposure. Furthermore, he has alleged that the company banned him from the conference and blacklisted him. Following this, he initiated a lawsuit worth $3.2 million in immediate damages with hundreds of millions more in lost revenue.
According to the lawsuit filed in the federal court of San Jose, California, Meta went ahead with the cancellation after learning that Elijah was in discussions with competitors ByteDance and Apple about launching the app on their respective VR platforms. The lawsuit also states that the market for VR fitness apps is expected to surpass $100 billion by 2030.
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The suit aims to show that Meta’s practices related to the VR industry are monopolistic. This is not the first case against the company in this matter either. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has also pushed to block Meta’s acquisition of the Supernatural app developer Within Unlimited, which the FTC alleged was an effort to get rid of competition in the market.
The lawsuit will gain importance as the competition in the VR headset market is heating up, with key players, including Apple, Google, and more, pushing for a greater share. Apple’s Vision Pro is expected to reach markets in early 2024. Meta, in particular, has been under pressure from investors to ramp up sales of VR headsets following losses in the VR tech division.
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Image source: Shutterstock
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