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Allowing users to install and run Android apps on the headset could boost the value of the headset

Oculus CTO John Carmack has said publicly that he’d love to open up Oculus Quest to Android apps to boost the headset’s usefulness, but admits he’s “not winning” the debate internally at Facebook.

Although the Quest home environment looks nothing like the home screen of your Android phone, the headset actually runs the Android operating system underneath it all. Allowing users to install and run Android apps on the headset—if just in a ‘flat’ mode on a virtual screen controlled by a laser pointer—could drastically boost the value of the headset by bringing all manner of video players, web browsers, productivity tools, utilities, and even flat games to the device.

Android apps running on Quest is apparently something Oculus’ own CTO has been arguing for internally.

Legendary developer John Carmack—who for several years held the role of Oculus CTO but now maintains a less formal “consulting CTO” arrangement—said during his Facebook Connect keynote in September that he doesn’t believe Oculus will be able to convince a meaningful portion of Android developers to rewrite their applications specifically for the headset. Instead, he says, the company needs to find a way to bring existing Android applications to Quest.

If Oculus allowed existing Android apps onto Quest, it could radically improve the usefulness of the headset by allowing users access to a much wider range of apps. They wouldn’t be ‘native’ to VR of course, but it’s easy to understand how much more value users would see from the headset if they could load up.

Because Quest is already running Android, it would be trivial from a technical standpoint to get Android apps up and running on the headset, and there’s a few ways Facebook could approach it.

For one, it could simply allow access to the Google Play store on the headset, allowing you to download apps to your Android device that you already own through the store, and then project those apps onto a flat screen inside the headset.

But it seems highly unlikely that Facebook would take this approach, as the company has clearly followed the ‘walled garden’ playbook of making the Oculus app store allowed on the headset. Instead of the Google Play store, Facebook could begin accepting ‘flat’ Android apps into the Oculus store and allow them to be distributed that way.

The company could also skip its own store and choose to allow users to sideload any Android APKs they have access too, leaving the feature mostly in the hands of power-users.

Unfortunately, we may not see any of these avenues pursued, despite Carmack’s insistence. In a recent tweet on the topic he noted, I continue to argue for Android apps on Quest, but so far, I’m not winning.