From concept formation to concept dissemination, from technology driven to capital intervention, "meta-universe" can be called the hottest topic in the past two years. 2021 is even known as the "first year of the Universe", which can be fully verified by the actions of domestic and foreign capital markets: In March 2021, the first Roblox of the Universe was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, with a market value of over 38 billion DOLLARS on the first day; In July, Facebook announced plans to transform itself into Meta-Universe within five years and renamed itself Meta in October. In August Nvidia, a chip giant, spent hundreds of millions of dollars to launch Omniverse, an simulation platform for the metasverse; In November, Microsoft announced plans for a more corporate "metasexes" where users can share office files in a virtual world. At the same time, Domestic Internet giants such as Alibaba, Tencent, Bytedance, NetEase, Baidu and JD.com have also joined the competition.
Who is the meta-universe? "Metaverse" is translated from the English word "Metaverse", where the character "Meta" means "beyond" and "higher" in addition to "origin". Broadly speaking, the metadverse is like building a channel between the real world and the virtual space, connecting the physical world and the digital world, through which people switch and travel with their real and digital identities. With the development of science and technology and mature, people for yuan cosmic visions to technically implement, this will trigger the evolution of the realistic society in two directions: on the one hand, it will lead to the depth of the physical world and digital world, such as communication link, trade integration, and the consequent infrastructure providers, developers, content producers, etc. On the other hand, it will also bring human exploration in a variety of possible spiritual worlds, such as exploring the meaning and value of life dimensions, etc. To a certain extent, the meta-universe is the ultimate imagination based on the development of digital science and technology. It can be said that the meta-universe is a vision of the highest stage of the development of digital ecology.
If the progress of science and technology is the premise of the emergence of the meta-universe, then the integrated application of digital technology is the background of the explosion of the meta-universe. The 21st century is a technology blowout era, from AR, VR, MR to cloud computing, big data, from block chain, artificial intelligence to digital twin and so on, a series of dazzling technology intervention and shape a new era. The concept of meta-universe has become a global hot topic and has been highly concerned by industry and capital market. The driving force behind it is the innovation and breakthrough of relevant technologies in recent years, and it has gradually entered the landing stage. According to the front-end signs and development trend, as the "third generation Internet", the meta-universe will generate a virtual universe comprehensively connected with the human physical world, and people can feel the resulting super-large, infinite expansion, rich hierarchy and harmonious operation of the virtual world. People will be presented in front of the real world and the digital world of the integration of a new civilization landscape.
From the perspective of historical pattern, the mobile Internet today is actually very similar to the PC Internet ten years ago. The market has been relatively saturated and reached the limit of development, and all major Internet companies show signs of weak growth. At the same time, after the rapid popularization of mobile Internet, due to the weak growth has appeared "roll-in", the "incremental space" for further development has become very small. Based on the basic consensus that the meta-universe is essentially the third generation of Internet Web3.0, which is a higher dimension of digital space on top of Web 1.0 PC Internet and Web 2.0 mobile Internet, and represents the evolution direction of the next generation of Internet and the critical point of Internet transformation and upgrading, As an investment institution, it is in line with the logic of industrial development to seize the new opportunity after the mobile Internet and incubate new giants during the critical window period of industrial transformation and upgrading.
As an emerging representative of the immersive intelligent technology industry, meta-universe is naturally encouraged and supported by the national level. Since 2022, the governments of Beijing, Shanghai, Fujian, Anhui, Guangdong and other places have stepped up efforts to lay out the industrial circuit of metaverse, and issued policies and documents related to metaverse and virtual reality (VR). On December 12, 2021, The State Council issued the "14th Five-year Plan for Digital Economy Development", which not only clarified the attributes of the digital economy, such as data resources as the key elements, but also proposed a series of supporting service needs, such as strengthening the construction of digital infrastructure and the integrated development of the real economy of the digital economy. There is no doubt that digital economy has become the most extensive new economic form affecting and penetrating the whole industry, and has become a powerful new engine to promote economic development. Judging from the industry development in recent years, all kinds of new business forms spawned by the meta-universe are expected to become a new engine driving the high-quality growth of the digital economy in the future. It is estimated that the size of China's metasexes market will keep growing from 2022 to 2027.
Rome was not built in a day. The meta-universe is a hierarchical system engineering, which needs to be integrated with application scenarios in stages. If we look into the evolution path of the meta-universe from the perspective of industrial development and time, it can be roughly divided into three stages:
The first stage is to launch the exploratory period. At this stage, different industries are trying to make some technological single points online, digital and virtualization, which can be regarded as the embryonic stage of the meta-universe. Different players at this stage trying to find the direction of the business model, in the game, NFT, terminal hardware, virtual people, social applications such as yuan space subdivision circuit gradually, but the early stage technology and the product more, form the primary products, most of business model has not yet been run, more will yuan is the universe as a hot concept to follow and marketing, Concept hype, concept dissemination is far greater than entity performance. This phase of the technology landscape involves metasomeric infrastructure vendors, including communications networks, cloud computing, and new open network protocols. The ideal metasemes would accommodate millions, or tens, or even hundreds of millions of people at the same time, so the need for network and computing power would grow exponentially, with peaks of computing power perhaps a thousand or ten thousand times that of today's mainstream online games. In addition, just as the different internets are connected through HTTP, the transport between the metasomes and the real world, and between different metasomes, requires an interconnected, new, open network protocol.
The second stage is the completion of the architecture. In this stage, different industries have a deeper understanding and technological precipitation of digitalization and virtualization, and can initially realize each independent meta-universe based on a single industry, showing the characteristics of decentralization, single industry, multi-center and small ecology. At this stage, the business model takes shape. On the basis of experiments in different directions in the previous stage, application scenarios are reshaped, emerging models are expanded, and mature and sustainable business models gradually emerge. They can attract a large number of users, address some demand pain points, or have high barriers to business. For example, in the era of mobile Internet, short videos are typical products that attract users to get through the business model, while takeout and O2O products mainly solve the pain points of life and provide corresponding services to build their own business model. In terms of the technical layout at this stage, the core needs to realize the construction of platform infrastructure and the development of key link devices, such as XR devices, smart glasses, electronic skin, brain-computer interface, etc. Hardware equipment manufacturers will make a great contribution at this stage. In application development, it mainly focuses on the digital generation of the main scenes in real life, such as entertainment, social contact, work, school, shopping, etc. In addition, this stage will also involve the metacosmic economic system composed of accounting system and NFT transaction system.
The third stage is ecological maturity. The metasexes of different independent industries began to gradually break through data and standards to achieve the integration stage of similarity and integration. In this stage of development, cross-platform and cross-industry ecological intercommunication and integration will occur in the meta-universe, and gradually the decentralized and multi-center small ecological integration will form two meta-universe ecological systems centering on industry and individual dual centers. In this stage, unified data standard, payment system and identity authentication are the key to realize the integration of cross-platform development. At this stage, as the business model matures, the industry pays more attention to sustainable development and profitability, continuously increases and improves the layout of the industry, improves the integration of individuals, and gradually approaches the final form of the meta-universe.
The meta-universe is an always-on virtual world that is derived from the real world, but is parallel to it, interacts with it, and is always online. Behind the ideal form is an immersive experience based on extended reality technology. Is based on digital twinning technology to create a mirror image of the real world; It is a creative ecosystem that builds an economy based on blockchain technology and allows each user to produce content and edit the world.
Contemporary Chinese entrepreneurs have basically experienced the subversive power of the mobile Internet era. Many new technologies and models have a low threshold at the beginning, but once they mature, they will be crowded and expensive, and the entry cost of latecomers will be very high. Faced with such a hot spot of great opportunities and risks, entrepreneurs tend to have a certain degree of "anxiety". How to face the arrival of the age of the meta-universe with a positive attitude and mentality? Here are some suggestions:
Upgrade dimension. For enterprises that want to apply various technologies and modes of the meta-universe to empower themselves, they can regard the meta-universe as a part of their digital transformation and upgrading strategy. Aiming at the pain points and needs of the industry, effective application is carried out according to the development stages of the meta-universe and its associated technologies, so as to realize the great value of the industry by stages. Specifically, the immersive experience in the meta-universe is more suitable for the marketing and customer interaction scenarios of enterprises. Digital twin, 3D simulation, etc., suitable for enterprise research and development and production and manufacturing; Artificial intelligence algorithm is universal applicability.
Compete for users. For enterprises that want to develop meta-universe business and provide services for other enterprises/individuals, it will get twice the result with half the effort to quickly launch their own solutions and apply them in a certain field, occupy customers' minds and absorb industry resources. Once the concept of the metasurverse was introduced, it was quickly responded by the capital market, enterprises and individuals, and the overall market adoption was much faster than the Internet was initially accepted by enterprises and the general public. In this field, the window of opportunity is very short, and the first mover has the advantage.
Mode innovation. Enterprises that want to enter the meta-universe market from a certain point to develop innovative business can start from the value chain of the meta-universe to find the point that matches their existing capabilities. Take THE NFT digital art market as an example. There are four layers in the NFT industrial chain, namely the basic implementation layer, the creation layer, the trading platform layer and the derivative business layer. The core capabilities of each layer are respectively blockchain/NFT technology, art creation, trading platform operation and industry application. Enterprises can choose value chain positioning according to their own characteristics. The entry point for the entire metasverse can be considered in a similar manner.
Ecological construction. The technology of the meta-universe is developing towards a more granular and refined direction, and the scene application needs of users are developing towards a more comprehensive direction. This requires enterprises to build an ecosystem around their core capabilities and provide integrated application scenarios and solutions for users.
Risk aversion. Avoid areas that do not conform to national policies; Do a good job in data management and network security to prevent data leakage; Avoid speculative mentality to participate in the meta-universe, not anxious, not impetuous, not hype.
The incubation of the concept of "meta-universe", the dissemination of ideas and the iterative upgrading of industries driven by capital are the process of the rapid development of science and technology and the explosion of human imagination. For Chinese enterprises, they should actively embrace this new thing, clarify their own layout and positioning in the vision of the meta-universe, accelerate digital transformation and upgrading, lock the segmentation track matching their own resources and capabilities, continue to strengthen the construction of their core capabilities, and better adapt to the development of digital ecology and invest in it.