2022 is poised to be the biggest year yet for the “metaverse”, as the parent company of Facebook Meta, Apple, Microsoft and Google prepare to release new hardware products and software services in a market that has so far been a niche market for early adopters.
“Metaverse” describes software and hardware that allows users to play or work in a virtual 3-D space or take information from the internet and integrate it with the real world in real time. For now, the metaverse can be accessed through smartphones, but eventually, it will be experienced through advanced virtual reality or augmented reality headsets, advocates say.
Big tech companies are betting that gadgets that bring their users into enhanced or imaginary worlds will open up the biggest new software market since Apple introduced touchscreen smartphones. in 2007. If the metaverse is successful, then perhaps everyone with a smartphone today will also have a pair of computer glasses or a VR headset in a few years.
“The big tech platforms (which benefit from the rise of mobile computing apps) are now heading towards augmented reality as the next computing platform shift,” said analyst Eric Sheridan of Goldman Sachs wrote in a note in December. He said this appeared to be “the next logical shift in consumption patterns” and would create new leaders in the industry.
Companies are pouring money into research and development into prototypes and underlying technologies and preparing for a virtual war when their products hit the market.
Venture capitalists invested $10 billion in virtual world startups by 2021, according to Crunchbaseand that doesn’t count the budget from the big Tech players. For example, Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said the company was spending so much money on VR and AR in 2021, that it cut the company’s profits by $10 billion.
Goldman Sachs analysts estimate that around $1.35 trillion will be invested in the development of these technologies in the coming years.
Here’s where the big names in the tech industry are and what they’re expected to release next year:
Meta
Facebook’s testing of the new Horizon Workroom teleworking app for the Oculus Quest 2 virtual reality headset is shown in a handout image obtained by Reuters on August 18, 2021.
Facebook | Reuters
Facebook is all in metaverse technology. In fact, in 2021 it changed its name to Meta Platforms to reflect the company’s new focus.
Meta takes the lead over Big Tech competitors: It currently manufactures and sells VR hardware and has 75% of the market by 2021, according to IDC.
At Christmas, the most popular app on Apple’s App Store in the US was virtual reality app Oculus that required the use of a Quest 2 headset, an imperfect but meaningful sign that so many people have found the device. virtual reality under the tree.
Meta has not yet announced sales for its Quest. But Qualcomm, the company that makes Mission’s central chip, estimates that the company shipped 10 million units in November. Those aren’t smartphone numbers, but they’re important — and fueled by massive TV ad campaigns highlighting the hardware. .
Meta is planning to release another virtual reality headset this year which it already has call Project Cambria. According to Facebook, the device will either have better “mixed reality” hardware, or use a camera outside of a VR headset to deliver the real world into viewers. Meta says it will also include face and eye tracking, making the device more responsive to user commands.
Meta’s initial foray into the market gave the company an early look at what users wanted to launch the software on their headphones. This month, it launched a social platform called Horizon Worlds, where people can attend comedy shows and movie nights inside Facebook’s virtual world.
Meta has acquired several companies that make popular apps for the Oculus headset, most notably Supernatural, a workout game in which the user smashes floating blocks at the right time to the beat.
This strategy is subject to antitrust scrutiny. The Federal Trade Commission has opened an in-depth investigation into the $400 million acquisition, Information reported.
Apple
Augmented reality
Source: Apple
Apple has never confirmed that it is working on a headset, but it has been testing the approaches inside its Tech Development Team for years.
Apple has been laying the groundwork for a massive new product portfolio. Its newer iPhones are equipped with Lidar sensors, which can measure the distance of an object – crucial for location-based applications. Recent iPhones and iPads come with software called ARkit, which allows developers to create apps that use the iPhone’s sensors to accurately map and localize rooms.
These tech building blocks are laying the groundwork for an entirely new product, expected to be a high-end Apple-made headset that blends virtual and augmented reality, according to the report. may be released in 2022.
Unlike Meta, Apple doesn’t discuss new hardware products until they’re ready to be revealed. When Apple releases headphones, it has the potential to shake up the entire market and provide a new approach to many competitors, just as the iPhone did for smartphones and the Apple Watch did for smartwatches. bright.
Apple’s competitors will be watching closely to see Apple CEO Tim Cook introduce the biggest advantages and selling points for the company’s headphones.
The content and how Apple integrates its services will be critical to the appeal of the device. Will Apple introduce a new app store for virtual reality apps? Apple headsets with VR-based sports or exclusive content or music derived from its NextVR purchase?
Investors and market analysts are beginning to wonder if future sales of headphones or other fact-based devices will push Apple’s stock even higher if it does. first major new product portfolio in seven years.
“Apple’s current market value does not reflect new product category launches,” Citi analysts wrote in December. “This will change with the launch of new AR/VR headsets. in 2022.”
However, Apple won’t call it a “metaverse”. “I’ll stay away from buzzwords. We just call it augmented reality,” Cook said in September.
Alphabet’s Glass is used in production
Alphabet
Google sparked the headset craze in Silicon Valley when it introduced Google Glass in 2013. The experiment wasn’t well received, but Google didn’t give up. To this day, Google sells Glass headsets to businesses, but they’re not usually made available to consumers.
Now, there are signs that Google is seriously getting back into augmented reality, even though it doesn’t have as many widely publicized products or technologies as its rivals. Since Glass first launched, newer AR headsets have been introduced with more sophisticated screens, better sensors, and more powerful processors.
Google, whose Android operating system is the most popular smartphone software in the world, will lose the most if metaverse headsets and devices replace smartphones with the new operating system.
In 2020, Google buy North, a well-invested start-up developing lightweight AR glasses that are the functional spiritual successor to Google Glass.
Google now has a new team focused on operating systems for augmented reality, according to a post shared by senior director Mark Lucovsky in December. Before joining Google, Lucovsky worked at Meta’s Oculus.
According to the job listing, Google is hiring heavily for this team, which is working on an “innovative AR device” and is adding products “to the AR portfolio.”
Microsoft
Soldiers wear the IVAS system, a modified version of the HoloLens 2.
Our Army
Microsoft was the first Big Tech company to introduce a full-featured AR headset, the HoloLens, in 2016. But its current product is still far from a device that consumers will wear regularly.
Instead, Microsoft has focused on “enterprise” or selling headsets to businesses with a list price of $3,500 and wants to see if the technology will make their workers more productive.
HoloLens’ most famous customer is the US military. Microsoft won a $22 billion contract earlier this year to sell 120,000 custom HoloLenses to the government so soldiers could use them to “increase lethality.” However, earlier this year, the Army said it would delay to begin field trials of HoloLens through 2022.
Whether the deal continues to be delayed or whether it turns out to be a winner for both parties will be an important signal for the ultimate health of the augmented reality market.
HoloLens has also attracted interest of medical companies, who want to see if augmented reality can help improve the operating room or even help with remote surgery.
Microsoft is investing heavily in cloud services to become the glue for the virtual world that is expected to go public in 2022.
In March, the company announced Mesh, which allows software makers to create applications that allow different devices to share the same digital reality. Mesh works like a video call, only with a hologram. Microsoft laid the groundwork for this push in 2017 when get AltspaceVR.
These metaverse software features will launch in 2022. Microsoft is integrating Mesh into its video conferencing application, Teams, later this year. Xbox gaming features, another natural fit, are also live, no release date not yet. But it remains to be seen whether AR headsets improve the kind of productivity apps Microsoft is best known for.
However, CEO Satya Nadella is still very enthusiastic.
“I can’t overstate how groundbreaking this is,” Nadella said in November.
