Between Future and Dream, Metaverse

Global Sales Expected to Reach 317 Trillion Won in 2025... MS, Amazon, and Others Form Market
Naver Zepeto Surpasses 200 Million Users... Domestic Game Companies Also Start Establishing Firms and Investing
Top 3 Telecoms, Hyundai Motor, CJ ENM, and Others Form Metaverse K-Alliance

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy reporters Kang Nahum and Boo Aeri] The era of the metaverse (extended virtual world) is rapidly approaching. Facebook has even changed its company name to declare its transformation into a metaverse company, and domestic and international companies are preparing for the metaverse transition era by aggressively investing and building new business models related to the metaverse.

◆ Zepeto surpasses 200 million users... Game companies continue investing = According to the industry on the 29th, recently, domestic companies have been actively investing and forming alliances to enter the global metaverse market. Naver is the leading domestic company in the metaverse transition. Naver Z's metaverse platform Zepeto has surpassed 200 million cumulative users. Additionally, Naver Labs and Naver Cloud are leading the transition to the metaverse era by implementing a 'mirror world' using aerial photography and artificial intelligence (AI), rather than just a simple virtual space.

Investment activities by domestic game companies are also prominent. Netmarble's subsidiary Metaverse Entertainment has established a strategic partnership with Kakao Entertainment for metahuman technology and entertainment synergy. Kakao Entertainment will acquire 80,000 newly issued shares of Metaverse Entertainment through a third-party allotment via a paid-in capital increase. The combination of Metaverse Entertainment's metahuman technology and Kakao Entertainment's entertainment capabilities and know-how is expected to generate various synergies. In particular, the development of metaverse content such as virtual idol businesses targeting the global market is expected to accelerate.

Com2uS has established Com2uS Roca, a virtual reality (VR) game specialist developer, to expand metaverse synergies. It plans to engage in complex collaborations with partners across the content value chain, including the metaverse company Wizwick Studio, which it acquired last August. VR is considered a core component of the ultimate future metaverse ecosystem. Com2uS plans to build a multilateral cooperation system to create global mega IPs by converting existing various original intellectual properties (IPs) into VR-form metaverse content.

◆ K-Alliance targets the 317 trillion won market = Domestic companies have also formed the so-called 'Metaverse K-Alliance' to keep pace with global companies in the metaverse competition. The Metaverse Alliance is a public-private cooperative system for the development of the metaverse industry ecosystem based on extended reality (XR), including AR and VR. Seventeen companies participate, including the three major telecom operators SK Telecom, KT, and LG Uplus, as well as Hyundai Motor, Naver Labs, Kakao Entertainment, CJ ENM, Bundang Seoul National University Hospital, Lotte World, Maxst, VRTCT, and Raontech.

The reason domestic companies are fervently investing in the metaverse is the expectation that new markets will be formed as new technologies such as virtual currency, Internet of Things (IoT), cloud, and smart health connect. According to market research firm Strategy Analytics (SA), the global metaverse market is expected to reach $280 billion (approximately 317 trillion won) in related revenue by 2025. The 'metaverse economy,' where people enjoy and consume in virtual worlds, has now become a reality rather than a mirage.

◆ Will it surpass the internet revolution? = This is also why global companies such as Facebook, Microsoft (MS), Amazon, and Tencent have early on entered the market with massive financial resources and technological capabilities. Especially, MS, which foresaw the metaverse era early, is focusing all efforts on distributing AR devices. The latest AR goggles are the HoloLens 2, released last year. Microsoft applied HoloLens 2 to its mixed reality (MR) platform Mesh, allowing people to communicate as avatars within Mesh.

Amazon has entered the infrastructure business necessary for the metaverse, such as building servers, storage devices, and networks, while Chinese IT company Tencent has held the rights to the Chinese version of Roblox since partnering with the metaverse game Roblox in 2019.

However, there are also views that the metaverse will require many stages to achieve changes as significant as the internet revolution. Professor Lee Sung-yeop of Korea University's Graduate School of Technology Management said, "Since no new technology has emerged beyond virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies, the evolving process has been set as the concept of the metaverse," adding, "The key will be how much metaverse content is accepted, and if there is no novelty in actual applications or content, sustainability will be difficult."