Metaverse is an immersive virtual environment where you can actually be with people in the digital environment and digital society, and we can think of it as a embodied Internet, in which you are actually present instead of just looking at it as it is happening now.
And the international "City bank" said - in a report published recently - that the "Metaverse economy" may reach between 8 trillion and 13 trillion dollars by 2030.
The bank's definition of metaverse goes beyond virtual worlds - such as games and applications in virtual reality - to a broad vision that includes smart manufacturing technology, virtual advertising, online events such as concerts in metaverses, as well as digital forms of money, such as cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.
Under this broad umbrella, metaviruses will attract about 5 billion "unique visitors" by the end of this decade, which would translate into trillions of dollars in revenue in the next generation of the Internet, the bank said.
But what are the most countries and companies in the world investing in metaviruses?
Hundreds of American companies are investing tens of billions of dollars in metavirs, as the Internet of the future:
Microsoft.. 70 billion dollars
In this context, Microsoft announced last January that it would acquire Activision Blizzard, the massive video game developer and publisher, as a segment to secure a major place in the metaverse.
The $70 billion deal is Microsoft's largest ever, and will allow the company to develop games and software supported by the company within Metaverse in the coming years, according to the "makeuseof" platform in an expanded report on the most invested American companies. in metaverses.
Hundreds of American companies are investing in metaverse as the internet of the future (Shutterstock)
Meta.. 10 billion dollars
Facebook changed its name to Meta in an apparent reference to its big future bet on metaverses. In this context, Meta has invested a total of $10 billion in developing both hardware and software that will be used to provide “virtual reality” capabilities (VR) within metaverse, and the company also plans to invest in "augmented reality" (AR), another emerging technology with a promising future, according to the previous report.
Google starts with $39.5 million
After a number of rival companies invested in metaverses, Google finally decided to follow suit last January, as the company announced that it would invest $39.5 million in its own equity fund for all Metaverse projects, so it certainly looks like the company is poised to For a hypothetical and enhanced future, albeit only in its infancy, according to the previous report.
NVIDIA is a key player in the future metaverses
With its leadership in graphics processing units (GPUs), with profits of about $3 billion in the third quarter of last year alone, Nvidia is ideally placed to take advantage of metaverses, and will be a major player in this field in the The future, and it already currently owns its own platform of metavirus "Nvidia Omniverse".
The Make Uses Off platform report stated that the company plans to develop its own "avatar" that people can use to represent themselves in metaverses, which is a more advanced avatar than the meta company's avatar, so your future avatar may be produced by this giant company. .
China is very serious about everything about metaviruses
China seems very serious about everything about metavirus, and the Chinese government and giant companies are showing great interest in this immersive virtual environment, with huge investments and major acquisitions taking place in this context.
The number of new trademark applications in China containing the word metaverse exceeded 7,000, starting from the ninth of December last year, and more than a thousand companies registered trademarks related to metaverse, according to the D-Crypt platform ( decrypt) in a recent report.
Judging by the distribution of registered cities for metaverse-related trademarks, Beijing ranked first with 810;
It is followed by Guangzhou with 637;
Shenzhen and Shanghai, with 519 and 419, respectively.
The value of Chinese investments in metaviruses during the past year alone amounted to more than 10 billion yuan, (1 yuan = 0.15 dollars), and this number is constantly increasing.
Chinese technology giants have entered the market forcefully. Tencent has a large number of technologies and capabilities to explore and develop its own metaverses, and has applied to register the trademarks of King Metaverse and Tianmei Metaverse. ), and invested in at least 67 gaming companies this year.
For Tencent, her focus is primarily on gaming and social media.
People in developing countries view metaviruses more favorably (Shutterstock)
Alibaba has invested heavily in Sandbox, and the Alibaba DAMO Academy has set up a special lab for metavirus development, announcing that it will explore the “four layers” of metaverse: holographic construction, 3D simulation, Merging the virtual and the real, and linking the virtual to the real.
The company had invested heavily in augmented reality startup Magic Leap years ago, according to the previous report.
ByteDance, the parent company of the popular social networking app TikTok, took another step towards metaverse, spending 9 billion yuan to acquire headphone maker VR Pico;
This was one of the largest acquisitions that took place in China in the recent period.
India is investing billions
India is one of the world's most invested countries in metaviruses;
According to an industry report, the volume of Indian investments in augmented and virtual reality reached 135 billion Indian rupees (1 Indian rupees = 0.013 dollars) in 2020, with a growth rate of 38% each year, and accordingly, Indian investments will jump to 10 times their current size by the year 2027, according to what the “equitymaster” platform reported in a recent report.
Major Indian technology companies have entered aggressively to invest in metaverses, for example, Reliance Industries, which is the most valuable company in India in terms of market capital, where the company announced at its 43rd annual meeting the launch of smart glasses called " Jio Glass is designed for teachers and students to have access to 3D virtual classrooms.
Furthermore, the company invested $15 million in Two Platforms, a Silicon Valley startup, for a 25% stake.
There are a lot of Indian companies that have entered the market aggressively, investing a lot of money in metaverses.
Saudi Arabia is building its own metaverse
Saudi Arabia recently announced billions of dollars in investments in advanced technologies, as the Kingdom will invest more than 6.4 billion dollars in this field, including an investment of one billion dollars in NEOM Tech & Digital, named after the future city. in the Kingdom.
The official Saudi Press Agency stated that the company plans to launch its own metaverses in the future.
The state-owned Saudi oil company "Aramco" will also invest $1 billion in the "Prosperity7 Ventures Fund", so that the company will focus on investing in future technology, particularly the "blockchain" technology.
This is about countries and giant companies in the world, but what about people and people, who are the main target of all these billions of investments.
How do the peoples of the world view metaviruses and which are the most "loved" and enthusiastic for it?
People in developing countries view metaviruses more favorably than those who live in developed countries, and many of them see that metaviruses will positively affect their lives in the future, emphasizing that they will use them on a daily basis.
A recently published World Economic Forum (WEF) survey showed that excitement about metaviruses and virtual and augmented reality is much greater in developing countries than in high-income countries.
Market research company Ipsos released the results of the survey last May, which indicates that the concept of metaverse is now widely recognized, with 52% of more than 21,000 people surveyed in 29 countries saying they are fully aware. Palmetavers, and 50% of them said they had positive feelings about using it in their daily lives.
China, India, Peru, Saudi Arabia and Colombia ranked in the top five, respectively, with two-thirds or more of respondents in these countries saying they had positive feelings about them.
China was the highest, with 78% of Chinese respondents having positive feelings about using metavirus daily, followed by India at 75%.
Conversely, people in higher-income developed countries showed much less interest in metaviruses, with Japan scoring the lowest with only 22% showing positive feelings, followed by the UK (26%), Belgium (30%), Canada (30%) and France (31%). ) then Germany (31%).
Interestingly, the concept of metavirus itself was unfamiliar in those high-income countries either, with less than 30% in France, Belgium and Germany familiar with it.
Turkey was most familiar with Metaverse at 86%, followed by India (80%), China (73%) and South Korea (71%), with Poland recording the lowest level at 27%.
People in developing countries like South Africa, China and India have also been surveyed about which areas of life they think metaverses will impact the most, with people in developing countries such as South Africa, China and India saying it will most affect areas such as virtual learning, entertainment, socializing, and even applications such as remote surgery.
Once again, participants from high-income Japan, Belgium and France had the lowest percentages of those who agreed that metavirus apps would change people's lives dramatically.