Meta rivalry with Apple inflamed as Facebook parent company share price plummets

theguardian.com:

Mark Zuckerberg blamed “headwinds” this week after investors wiped about $220bn off Meta’s market value. One of the biggest blows came from longtime rival Apple.

Apple has long marketed itself as a champion of privacy, explicitly positioning itself in opposition to Facebook. Tensions between the two giants escalated with the release of Apple’s new operating system, which Meta feared would hamper its revenue model.

On Thursday those fears came true as Meta’s share price fell 26% in what could be the largest single-day wipeout in market value for a US company.

Meta blamed increasing competition for the dismal forecast, as well as privacy changes instituted by Apple last year.

The impact of Apple’s changes could be “in the order of $10bn” this year, the company said. The updates hurt advertisers’ ability to target ads to potential customers and measure the effectiveness of ads.

“We believe the impact of iOS overall is a headwind on our business in 2022,” Dave Wehner, Meta’s chief financial officer, said during the company’s earnings call on Wednesday.

Apple’s privacy changes allow users to prevent apps from tracking their online activity for advertising purposes. Now, iPhone users can optout from unwanted tracking, and a majority have chosen to do so.

Yet the changes didn’t hit other large tech companies that hard – or at all. Snap on Thursday said its advertising business bounced back from the effects of the changes faster than it expected, and shares of the company skyrocketed 50% as it provided a first quarter outlook that surpassed analyst estimates.

Amazon reported ad revenue of $9.7bn for the fourth quarter, up 32% from last year, and $31bn for the year, revealing an ad business larger than that of Google’s YouTube. Analyst