Nokia predicts a metaverse boom by 2030

Nokia, the Finnish company, was once the undisputed world leader in producing and selling mobile phones. It was also a leading provider of communication and networking solutions from 1998 to 2012. The company's fortunes took a turn for the worse in 2012 due to a wrong strategy, which allowed their main competitors, Samsung and Apple, to gain ground. Nokia decided to exit the smartphone market and focus on other areas of their business. It's unlikely that there are many people in Europe who haven't heard of the Nokia brand. 

Nokia has set its sights on the metaverse segment and is seriously considering it as a promising sales channel that will become popular within the next 5-7 years. Excited about the technology and its potential for mass adoption, the company shared its enthusiasm in an epic video called «Nokia Technology Vision 2030 in metaverse», dedicated to this particular digital sphere. It seems that Nokia has found a new niche for expansion.

Nokia has a grand vision for the metaverse – a shared virtual realm that seamlessly blends the digital and physical worlds. This will create endless possibilities for reimagining life, work, leisure, and communication. Their plan for the next decade is to harness the power of technological advancements and various integrations to merge cutting-edge innovations in areas such as semiconductors, the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), digital twins, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML). If Nokia's ambitious vision comes to fruition, the result will be a transformative digital space unlike anything we've seen before.

By 2026, a quarter of people are predicted to spend at least an hour a day in the metaverse, whether for work, learning, socializing, shopping, or entertainment, according to Gartner, a technology research and consulting firm. 

As technology advances, people's time in the metaverse is expected to increase, and Nokia predicts it will become an all-pervasive entity, independent of devices. This will bring benefits that will amaze everyone. The metaverse will be able to overcome any distance in seconds. This will improve social interaction, education, entertainment, and create new opportunities for businesses through the emergence of a new digital economy and currency. According to Citi estimates, by 2030, the overall target market for the metaverse economy could grow to $8-13 trillion. This industry will change consumer behavior and reorient industrial production.

The metaverse will come about through the gradual merging of the digital and physical worlds. By 2030, it will still be in its formation stage as a wide range of devices need to be connected. The main challenge will be to improve the "human-computer" interface to create a fully immersive experience in the virtual world. XR (augmented reality) or VR (virtual reality) glasses or helmets will be used for this purpose. And with the new interfaces, tactile feedback and remote control will allow users to interact in the metaverse.

The fusion of the physical and digital realms involves the creation and manipulation of dynamic duplicates of real-world objects, systems, and processes in a virtual environment. Digital twins of vehicles, warehouses, and production lines are already being utilized by modern industrial and logistic companies to expand production, reduce costs, and enhance worker safety. By 2030, this technology will be widely implemented in the business world.

The creation of suitable hardware and software, compatibility, standardization, the resolution of legal difficulties, and, most significantly, the establishment of a reliable and capacious network are all necessary for the metaverse. Nokia considers Web3 and cloud computing as the two key technological elements that should support the metaverse, serving as a basis for the digital transformation of all sectors. Another significant aspect that must be taken into consideration is the efficient dissemination of multimedia, without which there will be no metaverse.

Nokia predicts that there will be several metaverses catering to different customer segments, businesses, and even specific industries. Overall, there could be three major groups: industry, enterprise, and consumers (individuals).

All metaverses will share common features, technologies, devices, and interfaces. In addition, they will communicate among themselves. The business models and services they offer, however, will vary.

The industrial sector. In the next few years, industrial operational technologies (OT) will start integrating into metaverses for monitoring, analysis, and direct control of operations. Furthermore, industries will have the opportunity to reformat their activities, taking into account the constant shift in supply and demand. Industrial and corporate metaverses will interact with each other. Information about any product will be present in both of these metaverses to capture its entire life cycle - from development to shelf delivery for sale.

Enterprise sector. The use of more advanced tools for communication and collaboration, enabled by XR and VR technologies, will aid in the development of a corporate metaverse. Its main focus will be on controlling core systems in order to enhance business productivity and establish firm connections with partners. This will enable integration of the IT systems of companies with OT systems in the industry.

Consumer sector. The consumer sector currently lacks interesting ideas and effective business models to create popular and mass-market applications, despite the hype and experimentation surrounding the metaverse. While there has been some progress in VR-based gaming and social projects, the metaverse's potential for consumers depends on factors such as the size, form factors, and cost of VR headsets, as well as the creation of common standards. Until these issues are resolved, the metaverse will be unable to realize its full potential for consumers.

The metaverse, with all its vast potential, cannot achieve success and widespread adoption without a meticulously designed network architecture and fast communication channels. Thus, the network can play a crucial role in realizing the metaverse's mass adoption.

The networks of the next decade, based on the 5G-Advanced and 6G standards, must provide optimal connectivity, enormous capacity, and scalability to meet the growing demands of the metaverse.

Today, 5G already provides a glimpse of how the metaverse will work, supporting a large number of specialized AR headsets and smartphone apps. The real changes will come in 2025 after the deployment of 5G-Advanced. That's when XR technologies will truly come into their own. Greater bandwidth and lower latency will provide a quality photorealistic visual image and fast interaction with objects in the metaverse. Applications will be able to support a large number of XR users at any time and will be able to operate with any number of metaverses and their content.

By 2030, with the advent of 6G, the metaverse will take another huge leap forward, introducing incredibly captivating holographic effects for the user. XR will become the industrial standard, as low-cost VR glasses will be mass-produced and sold. The unique characteristics of the 6G generation will make it possible to create real-time digital twins for every physical entity or object.

The metaverse will become a global project that will require collective efforts and cooperation across the entire ecosystem. To become a successful and widespread phenomenon, the metaverse must be open to everyone, but with a strict security system.