Industrial metaverse gains momentum as businesses embrace innovations

By Onome Amuge

Business leaders across the globe  are confident in the long-term potential of metaverse use cases in the industrial and enterprise sectors, with the UK and US taking an early lead for applications in the workplace, according to a report by Nokia and multinational consultancy,EY.

The report, which is an aftermath of a survey targeting 860 executives from the two metarverse leading countries, in addition to Brazil, Germany, Japan and South Korea focused on four sectors including automotive; industrial goods and manufacturing; transportation, supply chains and logistics; and power and utilities.

Nokia, in its survey,  found 58 per cent of companies investing in the metaverse have already deployed the technology at least once, and 94 per cent of businesses that haven’t are planning to do so in the next two years.

In addition, nearly all respondents claimed the use of metaverse-related technology brings “additional innovative capabilities” to advance Industry 4.0 monetisation and use cases.

“Companies from the US, and the UK are leading the way when it comes to having deployed or piloted at least one industrial or enterprise metaverse use case at 65 per cent and 64 per cent respectively, followed by Brazil at 63 per cent,” the report stated.

Companies already using metaverse technology such as XR headsets or digital twins identified capex reduction, sustainability and safety as key benefits, claiming they have seen improvements in these areas after deployments.

Respondents from the industrial sector also claimed XR and metaverse-enabled tools can support skills training, advance R&D projects and product prototyping.

The metaverse, according to analysts, is a virtual reality super-platform that can house social media, online video games and other apps within the same cyberspace, and  is gradually positioning itself to be the Internet 3.0.

For  business owners,embracing the metaverse, is considered a major way of not only staying competitive to gain customer retention, but also  securing a  significant place in the online world.