Understanding the metaverse
The metaverse is best understood as an evolution of the internet into a more spatially immersive, compelling, and frictionless 3D web, viewable by virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), along with traditional compute devices, with three key aspects: presence, interoperability and standardisation. There are five key vectors for metaverse advancements, in our view: (1) hardware; (2) infrastructure; (3) content; (4) community; and (5) currency/settlement mechanism.
At this early stage in its emergence, there are of course varying views as to what constitutes the metaverse; in this report we outline how leading companies Meta, Microsoft, Google, Apple, NVIDIA, and Niantic conceptualise the metaverse, as well as perspectives from VCs and industry commentators.
Metaverse use cases are expanding
As is usually the case at the start of most such technology evolutions, some existing applications leverage emerging innovations to deliver a better and/or broader user experience. However, eventually completely new-use cases develop, as the technology evolves and matures and new killer apps can take advantage of the better on-device
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