Tech Giants Bet Big On Metaverse Hardware

In May 2022, Meta (formerly Facebook) opened its first hardware store in California to give its consumers a first-hand experience of its hardware products such as virtual reality headsets and augmented reality goggles and glasses.

- Priya Kapoor

With this, the company has set the wheel in motion for metaverse-the next evolution of the internet. Meta is the leader in the rapidly growing market for VR headsets. In 2021, Quest 2, Meta's flagship VR headset, constituted 78% (8.7 million units) of total headsets (11.2 million units), according to data from research from International Data Corporation (IDC). It was followed by DPVR and ByteDance's Pico. While DPVR captured 5.1% share globally, Pico secured the third rank with 4.5% share of the market.

The total AR/VR headsets shipped in 2021 were an increase of 92.1% over previous year. In 2022, this is expected to touch 16.49 million units. And four years down line, it is expected to cross over 50 million units.

AR/VR KEY TO ACCESSING METAVERSE

AR/VR devices play an important part in accessing the world of metaverse. Enabled by Web 3, the metaverse is an amalgamation of virtual and augmented reality. According to a new report titled The Corporate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Metaverse from Boston Consulting Group, the total metaverse market is expected to reach $250 to $400 market by 2025. No doubt, if metaverse has to see good growth, the usage of AR/VR devices also has to go up. Says Sly Lee, COO and Co-founder, Emerge, a US-based VR hardware startup, With each new era of human-computer interaction has come new hardware, in both consumer and enterprise sectors. Just as the current version of mobile computing was enabled by smartphones, the next era called the metaverse will be enabled by new types of hardware that enable a deeper sense of presence. Until that point, the true potential of the metaverse will be limited.