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Who will be one step ahead of the "Meta Universe" battlefield in Tencent/Facebook/WMI holographic competitions?

source
https://min.news/en/tech/f90c3109700da776703e2a419d73afdf.html

2021-10-15 05:37 HKT

Today we will talk about the "meta universe" of the fire in a more systematic way.

Speaking of meta universe, we have to mention the famous American science fiction writer Neal Stephenson. In 1992, he published his novel "Avalanche". In the book, Neil Stephenson describes a virtual world parallel to the real world and named it "Metaverse".

Metaverse is composed of two roots:
Meta and Verse.
Meta means "transcendence" and "meta"
and verse means "universe".
Simply put, meta-universe is the use of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and Internet (Internet) technologies to project reality elements one by one into the virtual online world. In reality, people can become digital, where they have a network clone to engage in various activities. At present, there is still a long way to go to realize the meta-universe.

In April, there was a “metacosmic fever” around the world. The VR/AR industry completed 19 financing mergers and acquisitions, and the amount of financing more than doubled from the previous month. Over the past few months, the momentum of the rise of Metaverse has intensified. In August, the VR/AR industry completed 22 global financings, with a total amount of US$1.848.82 million. Behind this, technology giants and investment institutions have entered the game one after another, using "spending money" to seize the track.

The meta-universe may bring three changes to human work and life:
- First, the extremely immersive interactive experience brings people an experience far beyond the 2D era;
- Second, efficiency is improved, and the iteration of life, industry, society, and technology greatly improves efficiency;
- Third, reduce costs. Human costs, resource costs, time costs, transaction costs, etc. are greatly reduced in the context of the meta universe.

Tech giants seize the track
As far as China is concerned, Tencent has followed closely in the layout of Meta Universe.
In December last year, Ma Huateng, the man at the helm of Tencent, said that the mobile Internet era has passed, and the next wave of upgrades is the true Internet. The true Internet in his mouth is highly similar to the meta universe. On September 14, Tencent applied for the registration of the "QQ Yuan Universe" trademark. Prior to this, it had applied for the registration of the trademarks of "Wang Zhe Yuan Universe" and "Tian Dollar Universe".

From a widening perspective, in addition to the trademark, Tencent's meta universe is very broad. Some organizations have counted the areas that Tencent is involved in on the meta universe, including games, social networking, live broadcast and other businesses. The focus is on the game.

In Roblox's $150 million Series G financing in February last year, Tencent was among the investors. In April of this year, game developer Epic announced that it had received 1 billion US dollars in financing for the development of Meta universe business, which showed that Tencent holds a 40% stake in Epic. In addition, Epic Games is already an affiliate of Tencent Group, and Tencent has the right to nominate directors on the board of directors of Epic Games.
In general, Tencent's current meta-universe layout ideas. More want to aggregate third-party and own VR content through intermediate platforms.

In addition to Tencent, the most recent investment in Meta universe that has attracted the most attention from the outside world is the acquisition of Pico by ByteDance.
On August 29, Pico disclosed in a letter from all staff that the company was acquired by ByteDance. This VR startup company was founded in 2015 and focuses on virtual reality technology and product development.

Among the foreign technology giants, the strong competitors of Tencent and Byte-Facebook, have both come early and come violently in investing in Meta Universe.

As early as 2014, Facebook spent $3 billion to acquire Oculus, a VR hardware equipment manufacturer, demonstrating its determination to enter the meta-universe. So far, Facebook has invested in at least 20 VR-related companies, and is particularly keen on VR game companies.
In June of this year, Facebook acquired BigBox VR studio. The studio's work includes the popular VR "chicken eating" game "POPULATION: ONE". Since its release in October last year, the game's revenue on the Oculus Quest platform alone has exceeded $10 million.
Earlier, Facebook also acquired VR game developers Downpour Interactive, Ready at Dawn, and Sanzaru Games. Not long ago, its CEO Mark Zuckerberg said: Facebook will transform from a social media company to a meta-universe company.

In addition to technology giants such as Bytedance, Facebook, and Tencent, many other players are also stepping up their efforts to deploy the meta universe.

In May last year, Apple acquired NextVR, a live VR startup company. This is Apple's first merger and acquisition in the field of VR content. As of now, Apple has 18 VR/AR related mergers and acquisitions;

In January of this year, NetEase United Investment Company Structured Capital and other investors made an investment of up to 35 million U.S. dollars in Together Labs. Together Labs is the parent company of IMVU, the world's largest virtual character social platform.

According to the news from Zhitong Finance, WIMI.US, the first holographic unit, also deployed the meta universe early. In terms of software technology, based on imaging detection and recognition technologies, it can embed holographic AR content into virtual applications; application aspects , WiMi Hologram owns 4600 holographic virtual IP rights content , laying the foundation for entering the meta universe market.
Recently, the latest public information shows that WiMi Hologram formally established the "Holographic Meta-Universal Business Unit" on August 24 , laying out the research and development of the underlying holographic technology of Meta-Universe, and launching an active exploration and layout of the “Next Generation Internet” of Holographic Meta-Universe. On September 7th, a new augmented reality (AR) head-mounted display (HMD) product for the consumer market, "WiMi HoloAR lens", was released to further strengthen the software and hardware research and development of the underlying holographic technology, and expand the holographic AR technology in the yuan The user experience of the universe.

The chief analyst of the CITIC Securities technology industry believes that the ultimate meta-universe connecting the physical world and the digital world will become the way of life of mankind in 20 years and reshape the digital economy system. The meta-universe aggregates a large number of discrete single-point innovations to form new species, bringing long-term potential and opportunities beyond imagination. In terms of investment operations, Meta Universe is likely to be the next integrated innovation that will change human life in the medium and long term after the Internet, bringing investment opportunities in units of ten years.

The "meta universe" is accelerating its evolution into a virtual space that can mirror the real world and is independent of the real world. People in reality can use digital identities to entertain, socialize, study and work in the "meta universe", completely breaking life and The boundary of the game, from the consumer Internet to the industrial Internet, application scenarios have also been opened. It is estimated that the market size of Meta Universe will reach 800 billion U.S. dollars in 2024.

As the market's understanding of the metaverse gradually deepens, it is certain that everything from the consumer Internet to the industrial Internet will usher in the metauniverse era of online and offline integration in the future.