In the few months since the announcement by Meta (erstwhile Facebook), the metaverse has witnessed its own accelerated maturation curve, with an initial upheaval of activity, heightened expectations, cynicism from certain market sections and now a flurry of companies filing trademarks and patents to protect their piece of the pie.
Bloomberg Intelligence expects more organizations to jump on the bandwagon, pushing the market size to $800 billion by 2024. With associated markets also evolving (NFT market cap is currently above $41 billion, $54 billion has been spent on virtual goods in 2021, etc.), the virtual world will soon become a natural habitat in near future, necessitating enterprise investments for customer engagement. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2026, 25% of people will spend at least one hour a day in the metaverse for work, shopping, education, social and/or entertainment.