Metaverse : Extended Reality

The concept of the metaverse first appeared in the Novel "Show Crash"written by Neal Stephenson.

He describes a virtual world parallel to the real world, the Metaverse, where people in the real world all have digital avatars. They interact with each other through these avatars.

The Metaverse encloses AI, 5G, blockchain, 3D content creation and other elements. The core of metaverse is to continually optimize users' digital life experiences through Extended Reality (XR) and continuous iteration of Extended Reality technology and equipment.

More Importantly, the metaverse creates a new environment where users are virtually connected with their friends, family, office mates, even pets, and experiences.

The metaverse facilitates the transportation of users to the next-generation of social interactions. In the ideal case, metaverse users no longer consciously distinguish between what exists physically and virtually.

Extended Reality is no only limited to consumer ultimate experience of the metaverse but Extended Reality is widely applicable to enterprises also. Extended Reality is an important productivity tool in education, industrial manufacturing, healthcare, retail and many other cases involving remote training, implementation guidance, process management and knowledge precipitation.

As Extended Reality penetrates more scenarios at a fast pace, it will deeply affect every aspect of everyone's lives. The Extended Reality industry has been developing slowly over the past few years. The current Extended Reality development stage is similar to the inflection point before the launch of the Apple iPhone 4 in the smartphone industry.

Extended Reality headset shipments are projected to grow about 10 times from 11 million units in 2021 to 105 million in 2025, according to the latest Counterpoint Global XR (VR/AR) Forecast. The adoption of Virtual Reality (VR) headsets gained pace in 2020 and 2021, thanks primarily to the good performance of the Oculus Quest 2 in the consumer segment and DPVR and Pico in the enterprise segment. XR headset volumes will start picking up significantly in 2023, as it will be the biggest year for new XR product launches, with offerings from the Oculus Quest series, Sony playstation VR2 and the most awaited Apple AR glasses. Oculus and Sony have created a strong demand for their devices and built a good user base for upgrades, while Apple has a strong history of gaining volumes in a new category.

The industry has, therefore, already reached the industrial inflection point that Mark Zuckerberg believes is an important milestone for making a sustainable ecosystem for VirtualReality developers. In addition, as the industrial chain and technology continues to evolve, content application gradually prospers, ecological partners are rapidly engaged, and the entire metaverse ecosystem is continuing to augment. All helping Extended Reality terminal shipments boom.

More and more technology companies have plans for deployment in the Extended Reality field. Apple, Facebook (Meta), Microsoft, Google, among others, are all building Extended Reality ecosystems, strategically positioning them as "Next-generationcomputing platforms". The Metaverse industry chain is extensive and complicated, with many investment opportunities in the hardware, software, content and application links. In the meantime, more and more industrial capital is flowing in by big tech giants. These companies are looking to grasp investment opportunities in the metaverse.?

The future of Extended Reality is looking bright.