Adoption is how they improve their profit margin. The more products they have wearing their HMD, the better.
Long-term, sure, you've just described what a loss leader is.
I'm referring to short-to-medium term margin on the devices themselves.
Likely yes. Considering that the pandemic was near perfect for VR, they are probably seeing contraction of their user base now. Even with perfect market conditions in 2022, that division of Meta reported $13.7 billion in operating losses for Reality Labs.
With the amount they’ve spent so far I think they should have just literally gave them away.