Tencent, Alibaba and ByteDance are all stepping up investments in the metaverse, a market that is valued at $8 trillion in the future.
Metaverse app
According to Morgan Stanley, in China, the total metaverse market value could reach 52 trillion yuan. Leading technology companies such as Tencent, NetEase, ByteDance and Alibaba are said to be pioneers in this field.
| Big Tech China invests heavily in metaverse |
Analysts say the metaverse will have initial applications in areas such as virtual reality (VR), gaming and social networking. This may include purchasing virtual in-game items or creating digital avatars to participate in virtual meetings.
Winston Ma, managing partner at CloudTree Ventures, said the metaverse is the future of social networking, so all of China’s tech giants want to seize this opportunity to find new ways to earn money. attract young users. This is even more important as Big Tech is perfecting its business models on smartphones and mobile networks.
Race of Big Tech
Pony Ma – CEO of Tencent, said that the metaverse will be an opportunity to increase the development of many industries, such as games. Tencent is the world’s largest game company with many popular games on both PC and mobile, and also owns the Wechat application. Ma said Tencent has a lot of technology and know-how built to explore and develop the virtual universe.
NetEase, one of China’s gaming giants, has also set up a base in Hainan province to focus on developing metaverse applications.
Meanwhile, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is also expanding strongly into gaming in 2021. In August, the company acquired virtual reality headset maker Pico. Now the Beijing-based company is laying the groundwork for VR, social media and games.
Alibaba this year said it plans to roll out augmented reality (AR) glasses for virtual meetings. At the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, the e-commerce giant also launched a virtual human model named Dong Dong, capable of answering questions about the event and advertising related items. to the Olympics, using lifelike gestures and facial expressions.
China’s largest search engine Baidu launched a metaverse app last year called XiRang that can hold up to 100,000 people at once, but it’s still far from perfect. Ma Jie, vice president of Baidu, said it will take about six years for the app to officially launch.
Tech For Good Asia founder Charles Mok says the metaverse can relate to VR/AR supported games and create new social interaction environments. These will obviously be the areas that the Chinese tech giants will prioritize. For example, payments and integrated online services like WeChat can be extended and integrated into the metaverse.
Challenges posed
China’s metaverse market can be very different from other countries due to strict censorship, strict regulations on the technology sector, and Beijing’s harshness on cryptocurrencies.
New antitrust laws for Internet platforms have been proposed, while personal data protection laws have been passed. Beijing also put in place strict regulations to cut down on the time minors spend accessing online games. These existing regulations will likely be used to regulate metaverse applications, analysts say, even as new ones are introduced.
Hanyu Liu, China market analyst at Daxue Consulting, said each metaverse application will receive a separate set of regulations, building on top of the existing legislature.
In January 2022, authorities approved a set of regulations governing how Internet companies use recommendation algorithms, followed by draft rules regarding software for creating, editing, voice, video, image or virtual settings. These two rules, which overlap, will have an important impact on metaverse companies in China, according to Ma.
Metaverse apps that use cryptocurrency trading could also be affected as China has sought to wipe out crypto trading and mining. In addition, the country is promoting the e-CNY – the digital yuan – so payment options will also be limited.
Huong Dung(According to CNBC)
Korea invests 7.5 billion USD in metaverse and AI
The Korean Ministry of Science and ICT (MIST) has earmarked US$7.5 billion for projects including artificial intelligence (AI) and the K-metaverse virtual universe project as part of its Digital New Deal program. .
.
