In 2023, the development of the metaverse will enter a plateau period, but there are more and more bearish views.
Sales of VR headsets and augmented reality (AR) glasses in the U.S. plunged nearly 40 percent from a year earlier to $664 million as of Nov. 25, according to research firm Circana. This performance is far worse than in 2022. Hardware is a must-pass threshold for the metaverse, and there is still no breakthrough in 2023, which is the main basis for the bearish view.
Companies that are pioneering the metaverse in 2023 are also polarizing.
International markets
Goal
Meta's third-quarter earnings report once again reflects the momentum of huge losses in the metaverse business. Meta's loss in the quarter was 19% year-on-year to $3.74 billion, and Meta warned in its guidance that the loss of Reality Labs in 2024 will be significantly larger than in 2023, saying that this is due to the company's continued development of VR/mixed reality (XR)-related products and investment in further expanding the scale of the related ecosystem.
In 2023, Meta will have twists and turns in the metaverse business.
▌ Source: Network
At the beginning of the year, Meta lowered the proportion of the metaverse, reduced the production of VR equipment, and will not order new parts for the QuestPro, tilting its business focus to the social field and AI field, so that Meta ushered in a nirvana rebirth. In terms of metaverse games, Meta hopes to quickly monetize with the help of "HorizonWorlds", but the number of users continues to decline, and at the end of 2022, the number of users is less than 200,000, which is absolutely lagging behind. In early March, Meta officially released Llama, a large language model, which is considered an important tool to drive AI research and development. In July, the "Threads" social app was launched. Llama and Threads show that Meta is on the defensive in the metaverse business.
At the 10th MetaConnect in September, the highly anticipated MetaQuest 3 was unveiled as scheduled. In addition to the official release of Quest3, Meta also announced Meta's open-source large language model Llama2, as well as the second-generation Ray-Ban smart glasses equipped with MetaAI, showing the ultimate combination of "MR+AI+smart glasses" to all walks of life.
apple
In June 2023, Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled Apple's MR headset VisionPro at the WWDC23 World Developers Conference. There are high hopes for this product as the iPhone moment in the metaverse.
Samsung launched VR boxes in 2015-2017, Sony launched PSVR in 2016-2018, and Meta launched Oculus2 in 2020-2022.
▌ Source: Network
The industry hopes that Apple will once again achieve a breakthrough in the industry, set off a new "supply chain revolution" in the XR industry, and give birth to a new paradigm of software and hardware ecological standards, and Apple's MR is even expected to take over the iPhone and become a new product category that "defines the next decade".
One of the biggest highlights of AppleVisonPro is that there is no handle, which can be controlled by the user's hands, eyes and voice, which lowers the user's threshold for use and improves the efficiency of interaction. In addition, VisionPro is able to project a screen similar to a modern desktop to replace a computer monitor, and users can type using devices such as keyboards, which looks full of sci-fi.
At its core, the metaverse is about providing immersive experiences, which inevitably involve immersive technology, and Apple MR has once again opened people's eyes to the possibilities of the metaverse era.
Microsoft
In January 2023, Microsoft announced that it would lay off 10,000 employees in three months, or about 4.5% of Microsoft's total of 220,000 employees. The layoffs focused on virtual reality-related departments, including mixed reality hardware HoloLens, mixed reality (MR) division, AltSpaceVR, Surface devices, and Xbox, all of which have significantly adjusted their core architecture. In October, Microsoft stopped supporting ProjectAirsim and ProjectBonsai, both of which are considered important components of Microsoft's "industrial metaverse."
▌ Source: Network
But Microsoft's metaverse process hasn't stopped.
In October, Microsoft announced the completion of a $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard. "This acquisition will accelerate the growth of Microsoft's gaming business on mobile, PC, console and cloud, and provide the building blocks for building the metaverse," Microsoft said. "At the Inspire 2023 event, Microsoft announced a new program, the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, and announced that it will include the industrial metaverse in the projects described.
Google suspended the AR glasses project, codenamed "Iris", and switched to building an AR software platform. The company plans to provide system software for AR glasses from 2025.
▌ Source: Network
Roblox
Roblox had a good third quarter of fiscal 2023. With the blessing of "Game Peak Season + MetaVR", Roblox's revenue has accelerated beyond expectations. A lot of the growth in user data is driven by MetaVR. DAUs over the age of 13 continued to grow steadily in the third quarter, with total daily active users reaching 70 million, a net increase of 4.7 million quarter-on-quarter, mainly from North America and other regions.
But Roblox posted a net loss of $282.8 million in the second quarter, up from $176 million in the same period last year.
▌ Source: Network
Nvidia
NVIDIA's goal is to form a metaverse system with Omniverse as the platform, with strong computing power support and advanced hardware foundation. Nvidia's 2023 revenue will be almost double its 2022 revenue, thanks to the advantages of its artificial intelligence (AI) processors.
▌ Source: Network
Nvidia's (NVDA US) metaverse product matrix mainly includes: (1) applications (Audio2Face, CreateXR and other applications), (2) cloud services, (3) core technologies (MDL, Physx, RTX, USD), (4) hardware (GeForce graphics cards, RTX graphics cards, NVIDIA Certified Systems, NVIDIA studio, NVIDIA OVX, etc.).
In 2023, data centers and games will become the main sources of revenue for the company, of which the data center business revenue in the third quarter reached $14.5 billion, a year-on-year increase of 278.7%, becoming the main driver of revenue and profit growth.
Data quoted from:
The official account of Yuanli Society and the Metaverse Marketing Application Research Working Committee, relevant research reports of Huatai Securities, Hurun and other institutions, financial reports of Meta, Apple, Google, Alibaba, Tencent, China Mobile, BlueFocus, Tianxiaxiu, Goertek, iFLYTEK and other enterprises, as well as online public information.