That's right. 2022 is the year of the metaverse. Or VR. Or AR. Or NFTs? Well, it's going to be one of them. Maybe 2022 is the year we all go retro, get super into fax machines.
There are predictions out there that Metaverse could reach the $800B mark by 2024, as it is already sitting at around $47B thanks to a surge of interest in 2020 when the pandemic peaked.
So, a combination of accelerating digital technologies, alongside changing consumer habits and the introduction of Gen-Z fully into the consumer sphere, has led to the metaverse becoming more and more real. Plus, all of this has pushed marketers to consider that the metaverse has become a (virtual) reality. So, let's check out the current state of the metaverse, where consumers stand, what technologies are growing, and what platforms and brands are pulling ahead.
The current metaverse landscape
- Beyond the above $800B prediction, some think that Metaverse could reach $1 trillion in annual revenue, according to a report by Grayscale.
- Predictions lie with the Metaverse growing in the gaming world to become a $400B business by 2025. It was sitting at around $180 billion in 2020.
- The global augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) market is forecast to reach $30.7B in 2021, rising to close to $300B by 2024
- In 2025, the augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) market in Europe is forecast to reach $20.9B, an increase from the $2.8B the market was worth in 2021.
- Facebook is investing $10B on Metaverse
- Facebook recently invested $50M in non-profit funding groups to help develop the Metaverse responsibly. However, in reality, it agrees that the real metaverse idea will take another 10 to 15 years to become alive
- North America accounted for a relatively larger revenue share than other regional markets in the global metaverse market in 2020.
Consumer enthusiasm
- According to an online survey conducted in November 2021, 38% of adults in the United States reported that they had heard nothing at all about Facebook's new virtual reality project metaverse.
- Overall, 11% of respondents said that they had heard a lot about the Facebook's recent change of direction
- 68% of adults in the United States said that they were not interested in Meta's new virtual reality project metaverse.
- In 2020, 83.7M people used AR at least once per month in the United States. The corresponding figure for 2023 was forecast to reach over 110 million users.
- In the United States, a survey showed that as of July 2020 around 41% of respondents were not at all interested in augmented reality
- Just 7% of respondents stated that they were very interested in augmented reality. This is in contrast to the 21% of respondents aged 18 to 34 years who said they were very interested.
- In an early 2020 survey, 32% of the XR industry experts surveyed cited user experience as being one of the biggest obstacles to mass adoption of augmented reality (AR) technologies. Content offerings ran a close second place, with 18% highlighting this as an obstacle.
Wearable and physical tech
- Hardware segment was leading the metaverse market in terms of the component in 2020.
- In 2024, the number of AR/VR devices shipped worldwide is expected to increase to 76.7 million units
- By 2022, the number of augmented reality hardware shipments worldwide is expected to increase to nearly 26.7 million units
- The sales of VR hardware are set to generate total revenues of around 10 billion U.S. dollars in 2022.
- Estimates suggest that in 2020, sales of augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) headsets will reach around 5.5M units
- Forecasts project massive growth in both AR and VR headset sales in the coming years, with both technologies combined expected to sell over 26M units per year by 2023.
- Worldwide shipments of AR and VR headsets stood at 7 million in 2020. The number of shipments is forecasted to increase to 105M by 2025.
- Unit sales of virtual reality (VR) headsets worldwide are forecast to amount to 6.1M units, bringing the total cumulative installed base to 16.44M units. By 2024, the cumulative installed base of VR headsets is expected to surpass the 34M mark.
Augmented Reality
- By 2024 there will be an estimated 1.7B mobile augmented reality (AR) users worldwide, a rise of 1.5 billion from the 200 million seen in 2015.
- In 2022, there will be an estimated 1.1B mobile AR users worldwide
- By 2023, it is anticipated that global AR headset shipments will reach over 30 million units, over 12 times the number expected to be shipped in 2020.
- In 2020, the mobile augmented reality (AR) market was worth $6.87B. It is forecasted to rise to $9.53B in 2021, before jumping to over 26 billion U.S. dollars by 2025.
- Cost, accessibility, and safety are the top three factors most responsible for the augmented reality market surpassing the virtual reality market at some point according to a survey amongst XR industry experts.
Metaverse Events
- 10.7M Users have participated in Fortnite concerts Online
- Metaverse could approach $800B tackling live events and ads
- The primary market for online game makers and gaming hardware may exceed $400 billion in 2024 while opportunities in live entertainment and social media make up the remainder.
- The Decentraland’s pieces of land — NFT tokens, digital land plots in Decentraland Metaverse — and other NFTs have generated over 75,000 sales for a total of nearly $25M.
- In the first quarter of 2021, people spent nearly 10 billion hours playing Roblox, according to the company’s earnings report, and more than 42 million users logged in each day.
- Players also spent $652M on the site’s virtual currency, Robux.
- In May, a digital Gucci bag sold on the platform for more than $4,100, exceeding the price of the physical object.
- Lil Nas X’s concert reached 33M people on Roblox
- Travis Scott concert brought in 45M viewers.
This post is part of our Martech stats series, which compiles key data and trends. Others include:
