Analysts believe that total metaverse project spending could reach $5 trillion over the next eight years.
A study by McKinsey & Company, an international consulting firm, showed that the spending of metaverse projects could hit $5 trillion in eight years. Moreover, consumer activity will be divided into five major categories.
The McKinsey study aimed to analyze ongoing trends in the segment in order to predict future consumer behavior in the metaverse. The result of two global surveys involving over 3,000 users from 11 countries, as well as about 500 executives from 15 industries in ten different regions, was the Value Creation in the Metaverse report.
According to this report, the volume of venture capital and private financing in metaverse technology and infrastructure reached $57 billion in 2021. In 2022, investment in this sector has already exceeded $120 billion.
McKinsey analysts believe future metaverses will be divided into five major categories:
- sports activity and fitness;
- gaming activities;
- social communication;
- commerce;
- remote learning.
Analysts at McKinsey found that 59% of all consumers surveyed would prefer to move at least one of these industries into the metaverse and abandon its physical alternative. At the same time, 57% of companies consider shifting their business to virtual space. Note that 79% of metaverse active users have already made a purchase in them.
Recall that a recent study showed that a quarter of humanity would reproduce various aspects of their daily lives in digital worlds in the next four years.
According to the report, the most profitable in metaverses will be e-commerce (whose profitability by 2030 could reach from $2 to $2.6 trillion) and virtual advertising (from $144 to $206 billion). Approximately 95% of the companies surveyed believe that the metaverse will increase their capital. For example, 25% of executives are confident that fully or partially moving their operations into the virtual space could stimulate margin growth of about 15% within five years.
However, about 30% of CEOs are still unaware that virtual reality can generate significant returns for their companies. They also believe their earnings will be significantly impacted by the cost of retraining employees to work in virtual space.
The main challenges of working in the metaverse from the perspective of executives:
- 53% are confused about the possibility of building a profitable business model in virtual space;
- 42% see difficulties in developing the necessary software to transition to the metaverse;
- 38% foresee challenges in the company’s in-house infrastructure design;
- 37% justify their rejection of the sector’s prospects by the complexity of blockchain projects and the uncertainty of commercial relationships within them;
- 35% express concern about the need to develop entirely new products to operate in the metaverse;
- 35% cite a lack of clear regulatory rules to follow in the virtual space.
In China, recent data shows that entrepreneurs have started filing trademark applications in bulk with the word “metaverse,” while in the United States, the number of trademark applications related to the metaverse and the virtual world has increased by 51%.
