Meta has spent $36 billion building the metaverse but still has little to show for it, while tech sensations such as the iPhone, Xbox, and Amazon Echo cost way less

The iPhone, released in 2007, was in development for years at Apple, with some of the brightest minds in engineering working on the device.

Reports vary as to how much Apple actually spent creating it. According to one anonymous senior executive, speaking in 2013, the iPhone cost $150 million to make.

That's a low figure — tech publication The Information accounted for Apple's research and development spend between 2002 and 2007, coming up with a figure of $3.4 billion.

Android, now the most popular mobile software in the world, started as a standalone startup and initially struggled to get any cash from investors. Insider previously reported that founder Andy Rubin received $10,000 and an undisclosed additional amount of seed funding from famed technologist Steve Perlman to keep the company going.

Google in 2005 scooped Android up for about $50 million. The first Android phone, the HTC Dream, launched in 2008. In that period, Google spent about $6.6 billion on research and development, annual filings show, though that would include areas beyond just Android OS. There are now more than 3 billion active Android devices, according to Google — so Zuckerberg is well behind on bang for his buck.

As yet, fully self-driving cars are not widely available, despite major tech firms and startups plowing billions of dollars into their development.

Again, estimates here vary. McKinsey estimated in 2021 that investors had spent around $100 billion since 2010 developing the technologies core to autonomous vehicles, such as radars and cameras and lidar. That outstrips Meta's $36 billion on the metaverse, but is over a considerably longer period.

On a company basis, the estimates are more conservative, and come in cheaper than Meta's fledgling VR platform.

The New York Times in 2021, citing Pitchbook, suggests specific firms will each spend up to $10 billion each getting autonomous vehicles on the road. The Information estimates that total investment by companies to bring autonomous cars to market comes in around $27 billion, including Waymo, Cruise, Motional, Zoox, and Argo AI.

Microsoft debuted its first Xbox console in 2001 after investing (or losing) more than $4 billion on its development.

It took just 20 months to go from conception to launch, according to Dean Takahashi, author of "Opening the Xbox: Inside Microsoft's Plan to Unleash an Entertainment Revolution."

The console is one of the best-selling games consoles of all time, and it has about 14% market share globally.

Amazon lost hundreds of millions of dollars on its Alexa-powered device Echo before it was released in 2014, per Wired.

Founder Jeff Bezos himself authorized the spending, met with the development team every other day and helped make product decisions.

The PlayStation is the world's most popular gaming console, with more than 80% market share.

Its maker, Sony, spends less than $5 billion on research and development, according to analysis by the Guardian, noting that budget covers not just its consoles, but also its rival to Meta's metaverse vision, PlayStation VR. And unlike Meta, Sony makes about a quarter of its revenue from its gaming division.