Meta firmly believes in the success of the metaverse. The company has commissioned a series of research to examine the potential of metaverse technologies, including augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), across industries and regions.
The reports – an impressively comprehensive effort – available on Facebook's website cover the United States, Canada, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Sub-Saharan Africa, the European Union, the UK, Turkey, and the biggest economies in Asia (each covered separately). A separate global report provides a wrap-up of the metaverse's projected impact on the world economy. Below is a quick glance at crucial numbers. The estimation is based on the assumption that the metaverse adoption began already in 2022.
The latest data released by Meta suggests that by 2035 the annual GDP contribution from the metaverse could be as high as $760 billion for the US, €489 billion for the EU, and $1.4 trillion for China, Japan and Southeast Asia combined. For comparison, in 2022, the US GDP was $25.46 trillion, and the world's GDP was nearly $104 trillion. All in all, the predicted metaverse's share in driving the global economy is significant.
While non-believers in the metaverse may have a point when criticizing specific metaverse projects, they're bound to err in terms of a broader perspective. In the overview of the reports, Rob Sherman, VP of Policy at Meta, cites examples of existing adoption of metaverse technologies for a wide array of business purposes.
For example, companies in and outside the US are already using digital twins to optimize the processes of designing and building objects before commencing the construction work to save time and money. In the EU, the virtual technologies adoption rate is even higher than in the US (10% vs 9%), with automotive manufacturers using VR systems to design their factories and train their staff or EU farmers testing metaverse for improving crop production.
The same goes for Western and East Asia, with countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia (KSA) heavily investing in metaverse ecosystems. Currently, though, it's Asia Pacific that leads the way in developing the metaverse industry. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have already built strong metaverse ecosystems, and countries like Indonesia, India, and Thailand are slowly following suit.
