In a report, McKinsey & Company says that the metaverse could generate an economy equivalent to Japan's third-largest GDP.
McKinsey explained that the metaverse, which is still in its infancy stages and hasn't even come close to mass adoption yet could be worth up $5 trillion by 2030. This would give it enough value for companies like Apple or Google who may want their own piece of this growing industry.
"We estimate it may have a market impact of between $2 trillion and $2.6 trillion on e-commerce by 2030, depending on whether a base or upside case is realized. Similarly, we estimate it to have an impact of $180 billion to $270 billion on the academic virtual learning market, a $144 billion to $206 billion impact on the advertising market, and a $108 billion to $125 billion impact on the gaming market. These effects may manifest in very different ways across the value chain, however."
According to McKinsey, the metaverse is an exciting new frontier for companies to explore and it could be the thing that gives them a permanent lead over their competition. The report says executives currently consider cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, and augmented/virtual reality as some of today's most exciting metaverse technologies.
In the report it was mentioned that along with cryptocurrency and NFTs one sector in metaverse space will remain volatile -the virtual real estate asset market.
"Yet price increases are driven by scarcity that is designed into present-day platforms like Decentraland and The Sandbox. That heightens the investment risk involved, even if organizations making the investments aim to derive utility from their virtual real estate by, for instance, using it as their metaverse base of consumer interactions.
Their bet is not only on mass adoption of the metaverse in the coming years but also on adoption of the specific platform that the virtual land is bought in (given near-zero interoperability between worlds for now)."
As the metaverse continues to evolve, there will be more and more opportunities for businesses and individuals to capitalize on. The possibilities are endless, but here are a few examples: