A great number of people who are in the know are starting to mention big numbers when talking about the Metaverse, and that it is getting more people interested in an exponential way. Banking group Citibank have recently released a report that states that the metaverse could be worth $13 trillion by 2030, and will continue to strongly grow from there. 

The consumer market is currently receiving the majority of attention in the buzz surrounding the Metaverse. Companies that focus on gaming and social media are currently at the forefront, but businesses will take the initiative within the next five years. This shift will be driven by drive aimed at digital transformation as well as the future of work that are currently underway in a variety of industries, ranging from retail to healthcare and financial services. Microsoft and Meta are promoting the Metaverse as the ideal environment to support hybrid working and consumer integration. Big Tech companies – usually identified as being Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google – are in many forms’ supporters and promoters of the Metaverse, and that will only help to drive its growth as these companies continue to integrate and drive their products and services into the virtual world.

A great number of financial institutions already provide customers with digital assets and/or bespoke platforms that are expandable to meet the demands of the virtual world. It is reasonable to anticipate that financial institutions will develop their own private virtual world platforms, provide support for new products and even marketplaces, and bind these platforms to more conventional forms of infrastructure. Through VR sites such as Decentraland and The Sandbox, respectively, traditional financial institutions such as J.P. Morgan and HSBC have already established a presence in the metaverse. JP Morgan established a customer lounge known as Onyx with the intention of increasing social engagement, whereas HSBC purchased a plot in The Sandbox with the intention of using it to engage with fans of sports, e-sports, and gaming. Trading start-up eToro provides investors with a smart portfolio called MetaverseLife, which allows them to invest in stocks, cryptocurrencies, and other projects that are part of the metaverse. The BFSI sector is expected to experience rapid expansion over the course of the projection period, which will allow it to capture a sizeable portion of the available revenue opportunities over the next few years.

Retailers and manufacturers are already considering the implications that this technology will have on their operations, specifically with regard to the development of customer relationships, the enhancement of customer experiences, and the selection of products that consumers prefer to purchase. The opportunity has been recognised by major brands, such as Gucci, which partnered with Roblox during the pandemic to create a Gucci-inspired Garden on the gaming platform. The garden featured games in which users could win limited-edition Gucci accessories. It has also exceeded the price of a real bag by selling a limited-edition bag called the Dionysus Bag for 4,100 Robux – the official currency of Roblox.

The Metaverse is driven by a confluence of virtual reality and augmented reality, 5G networks, blockchain technology, and the assistance of AI. It will have an impact on every industry, from retail and advertising to education and entertainment, to science and invention, to governing and voting. It will also change the way we live our everyday lives by allowing Metaverse inhabitants to build for themselves. Users will eventually become to the Metaverse what software engineers have become to Web 2.0 and its architecture over the course of the next decade. It is likely that augmented reality, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence glasses will become the industry standard because they are comfortable to wear and can facilitate massive social shifts. But not everyone wants to wear a headset so there is likely to be a parallel development in AI-friendly computer systems using VR screens. With these, the user will be able to easily tell their browser what to do, what programme to run, what game to play, where to shop, or who to call by using a projected holistic screen that enables voice recognition and will likely be touch sensitive too. 

The current configuration of the Metaverse makes it possible for users to virtually interact with other people regardless of the distance between them. It offers the user a platform that has an immersive experience, which results in improved online social interactions as well as a great deal more functionality that goes beyond social media. In a variety of different ways, it makes online learning and education, gaming, the utilisation of cryptocurrencies and NFTs, as well as the working environment, simply better. Aside from that, it is anticipated that Metaverse will be able to serve both newly established businesses and the tremendous financial growth opportunities that will arise in the future. 

The Metaverse will, without a shadow of a doubt, call for extremely complex Internet of Things (IoT) architectures, such as cloud technology, network structure, and so on. The introduction of IoT in the metaverse has assisted in the surmounting of one of its formidable obstacles, which was the mapping of data from the physical world to the virtual world. According to the findings of a study, almost 84% of organisations around the world have implemented IoT technologies, and the number of IoT-connected devices is expected to increase by almost 18% to around 14.4 billion in 2022. It is anticipated that the expansion of the Metaverse Market will be helped along in the future by each of these.

The Metaverse has come a long way in just a few short years, and now that much of the initial hardware – mostly in terms of VR systems but also the mass adoption of hyper-fast internet connections – is in place, the actual development of the next phase can commence. With growth such as we are now seeing, the Metaverse is going to start getting very exciting, and very quickly. Strap in – the ride’s just starting!