The Metaverse Will be Worth Trillions, Infrastructure Needs to Catch Up, Says Report
According to a report by Citi GPS, the Metaverse will be worth 8 to 13 trillion dollars, but a major infrastructure investment by tech companies is needed in order to reach this market potential.
The entire addressable market for the Metaverse is estimated to be between $8 and $13 trillion, according to Citi’s latest Global Perspectives and Solutions (GPS) research.
However, Kathleen Boyle, managing editor at Citi GPS, believes that achieving this market potential will need significant infrastructural investment.
The research, titled ‘Metaverse and Money,’ portrays the Metaverse as the “next generation of the internet,” with the potential to attract up to five billion people.
“The content streaming environment of the Metaverse will likely require a computational efficiency improvement of over 1,000x today’s levels.” said the managing editor. “Investment will be needed in areas such as compute, storage, network infrastructure, consumer hardware, and game development platforms.”
Low latency, according to the authors, is one of the most important technological improvements required for a fully immersive metaverse and one of the biggest hurdles stopping it from spreading to a greater consumer base.
According to the paper, round-trip latency for video calling and cloud gaming is between 75 and 150 milliseconds, while a latency of fewer than 12 milliseconds is necessary for an immersive metaverse experience.
Boyle stated that only around 25 percent of the global population is expected to have access to 5G by 2025. Those numbers need to be ramped up and the infrastructure expanded if we are to manifest the envisioned Metaverse ecosystem free of lag, latency, network issues, and packet drops.
If such investments are made, gaming will no longer be the Metaverse’s primary use case, the study predicts. Instead, it will be what Boyle refers to as an “Open Metaverse” that is a community-owned, self-governed, and fully interoperable virtual space to engage in virtual commerce, art, advertising, healthcare, education, and more, according to Boyle.
Users will interact with the Metaverse not just through virtual reality (VR) headsets but also through personal computers, gaming consoles, and smartphones, according to the authors. They go on to add that the majority of use cases will be done through smartphones, with only a small subset of Metaverse participants will be doing so through VR headsets.
From the study, we can ascertain that although the demand and the desire to see a fully fleshed out Metaverse is defiantly out there, it is still in its infancy. This presents an opportunity for companies, young and old, to stake their claim on the Metaverse while it is seeding, and grow alongside the emerging technologies seeking to make it big.
Summary
A report by Citi GPS says that the Metaverse will one day be worth trillions of dollars, but current communication infrastructure and technology adoption stands in the way of a fully realized vision and unlock the full market potential.
Inside Telecom provides you with an extensive list of content covering all aspects of the tech industry. Keep an eye on our Metaverse section to stay informed and up-to-date with our daily articles.