The Metaverse’s Road to Mass Appeal Runs Through Smartphones

Gartner recently declared the Metaverse to be one of the top five emerging technology trends of 2022. Many venture capitalists and industry experts are banking on the Metaverse to revolutionize the Internet and the way we communicate, but right now the Metaverse is still very much a niche market.

Just consider this: In 2021, nearly 10 million VR and AR devices were shipped, representing a more than 80 percent increase over the prior year’s figure. While the year-on-year expansion is indeed dramatic, the figure itself is quite modest, if anything. VR gear, the equipment you need to join the Metaverse, is not something you’d find in the average household, which makes any sort of widespread adoption a distant prospect simply due to the lack of accessibility.

Metaverse has a hardware problem. At the moment, VR headsets or devices like Meta’s Oculus headsets are either too expensive, too clunky, too futuristic, or even too creepy for some. Certainly, there is a lot of intrigue around the Metaverse concept, but most people simply aren’t ready to get involved in something that requires this type of equipment or investment. This tempers the excitement from the recent hype and slows down the adoption phase.

An alternative access point to the Metaverse is through the web browser. This is simple and convenient to a certain degree, and will save you a lot of money on a VR headset. However, entering the Metaverse through a standard website comes with its own flaws. Without the VR equipment, the graphics and the level of interactivity feel very much like an early 2000s video game. Throw in latency problems, regardless of one’s internet connection, and the experience can be very frustrating and lackluster at best.

Making the Metaverse Palatable to Regular People

Despite all the recent hype and investments made by both Big Tech and blockchain-based startups, making the Metaverse resonate with a wider audience will take some time. For the industry, pushing through with innovative new platforms and futuristic hardware is important, but equally important is figuring out a way to make the Metaverse appeal to masses.

The Metaverse is not a centralized single entity. Therefore, it is important that all the major players and stakeholders in the industry take concrete steps to make the Metaverse more accessible to the general public. Seeing as we are in the early days of the Metaverse era, the industry needs to find some hook to connect with the broader public, in order to make the necessary inroads.

A mobile portal

The industry can bypass the necessity of VR headsets and other hardware and expand accessibility by enabling Metaverse availability on smartphones. At the moment, the vast majority of platforms aren’t available on mobile devices. This is a big mistake seeing that some 50 percent of the world’s nearly 8 billion people own smartphones, meaning there is a market of close to 4 billion people who could potentially gain easy access to certain innovative and interactive Metaverse platforms.

Mobile-based Metaverses would certainly have to overcome some of the same issues that plague browser-based platforms. However, with some progress in the technology, mobile could ascend to the level of some of the lower-end VR gear. Furthermore, mobile devices are the only feasible option, for now, as far as an AR Metaverse goes, as it's pretty hard to walk around in an Oculus headset or with a laptop. We witnessed the success that Pokemon Go had a few years back, and this should be a starting point for mobile-based platforms to build off.

In today’s digital world, the smartphone is considered our most versatile gateway to all things internet. It gives us access to friends, family, work, and entertainment, but in reality, the smartphone is so much more. It’s our portal to the entire world. For most of us, our smartphones are the most essential objects in our lives. Because of this central role they play, smartphones present themselves as the Metaverse’s best hope in attracting the average person.

Furthermore, the booming mobile-gaming industry highlights the value in creating high-quality mobile experiences. The convenience of mobile gaming and the demographic overlap between gamers and Metaverse advocates makes it clear that Metaverse platforms would benefit from tailoring AR experiences that are compatible with IOS and Android operating systems.

Working within the industry, I see firsthand the unlimited possibilities that the Metaverse provides. Whether for entertainment or education, the Metaverse, unquestionably, has immense potential but, at the moment, it feels like a vision in development more than a finished product. In order for this potential to be realized, there needs to be a bridge enabling widespread adaptation. This bridge is the smartphone–a tool that so many of us have with us at all times.

By making Metaverse experiences compatible with smartphones, the entire industry will benefit from being able to reach more people in a more familiar and convenient way. Ultimately this will lead to more people discovering and enjoying a diverse range of Metaverse experiences, leading to an increased willingness to adopt other Metaverse trends and technologies as the industry continues along its natural evolutionary course.

By Davide Cuttini, CEO and Co-founder of OVER.

About the author

Davide is a Software Engineer with expertise in augmented reality, deep learning and blockchain smart contracts. Davide has a wide experience in the development of engines for augmented reality; engine development within computer vision on mobile and embedded systems; machine learning models for videos, audio, and text use. He also has interests in System Integration and Robotics with a specific application in the industrial field. He works on solutions in the industrial field for companies like Bosch and Danieli Automation and he collaborates with IBM to scale up to industrial-AI solutions.