Page 14 - EngineerIT June 2022

FUTURE ICT

The metaverse: FOMO or JOMO?

By Joe Baguley, VP & CTO, VMware EMEA

or something so high-profile, the concept of the metaverse is nothing new. Many
people reading this will remember SecondLife - an earlier incarnation of the meeting
Fof physical and digital worlds. Despite gaining widespread popularity at the time,
its cultural relevance didn’t last particularly long. So where is the metaverse going to
succeed where previous attempts have failed?

A case of commercial FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
For a start, the technology we have at our disposal is far more advanced now, particularly
around virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). So much so that it is perpetuating
some staggering growth forecasts. According to Bloomberg, the Metaverse was valued
at $47.69 billion in 2020 and will be worth more than $800 billion by 2028. JPMorgan
predicts the metaverse market size will be more than $1 trillion while their competitor,
Goldman Sachs has gone on record saying it expects the market size to be up to $12
trillion.
Everywhere you look, companies with cash to burn are pouring money into the
metaverse. Epic Games raised $1 billion for metaverse plans while Facebook is investing
$10 billion. These, and many more, are all jockeying for first-mover advantage. They feel Joe Baguley
that, if there’s going to a place where cool stuff is happening, then they want to be there
first to underline just how farsighted they are. In a commercial sense, it’s a classic case of even understand what it is. No surprise
FOMO (fear of missing out). then that, if given an hour extra a day,
only 11% of consumers would rather
Less virtual, more real spend it exploring the metaverse than
In a straw poll, most people today would be more invested in the Marvel Universe the physical world.
than the metaverse - that shows just how detached from reality it is at the moment. This is indicative of a wider societal
Developmentally, rather than literally, of course. Indeed our own Digital Frontiers trend. That, after two years of forced
research - where we asked thousands of consumers about what they think about the digitalisation, people want less virtual
metaverse - found that almost four out of five of people believe it’s just a fad; a short- and more real. There is an inherent
term hype that will not amount to anything. It also found that well over half (59%) don’t resistance to anymore-than-necessary

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