- The metaverse can reach a $5 trillion valuation within the next seven years, according to consulting giant McKinsey
- McKinsey highlighted a smooth user experience as the biggest contributor to the future valuation
- The report sees e-commerce as a use case with the highest potential among consumers
Consulting giant McKinsey has indicated that the metaverse can reach a $5 trillion valuation by 2030. In a new report, the company said that providing a smooth user experience will be a key factor in attracting people to the virtual world, consequently driving its valuation. According to McKinsey, e-commerce will have the highest potential among consumer use cases.
VR and AR to Define Metaverse Adoption
However, for the virtual world to clearly define a path toward the $5 trillion valuation, the industry has to improve on virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), unified standards and metaverse platforms among other things.
According to the report e-commerce, banking, discrete manufacturing, professional services, retail, telecommunications, media and process manufacturing are the major fields across consumer and enterprise use cases likely to have the highest impact in the metaverse between now and 2030. Previously, metaverse projects had concentrated on education, marketing and virtual events with most of these initiatives only recording low to average uptake.
The report added that the metaverse’s potential is “too big to ignore” since it could account for more than half of all live concerts by 2030. According to McKinsey, businesses can prepare to take advantage of economic possibilities in the virtual world by first defining their goals and their role before creating and launching “initial activities and use cases.”
The Metaverse can make us Happier
Journey’s chief metaverse officer Cathy Hackl is quoted in the report saying that we can only “embrace and augment” the reality with “virtual content and experiences” to make it more fulfilling, “make us feel more connected to our loved ones, more productive at work, and happier people.”
A recent report by Kaspersky highlighted that metaverse-based criminal activities are likely to increase as metaverse adoption grows, indicating the need to take precautions when interacting with the digital world. McKinsey’s report comes when major traditional brands such as Gucci, Nike, Coca-Cola, Mastercard and LG are expanding their presence in Web 3.0, confirming that the virtual world is too big to ignore.
