Gartner: 25% of people will spend an hour a day in the Metaverse by 2026

By 2026, 25 per cent of people will spend at least one hour a day in the metaverse for work, shopping, education, social and entertainment, according to Gartner.

“Vendors are already building ways for users to replicate their lives in digital worlds,” said Marty Resnick, research vice president at Gartner. “From attending virtual classrooms to buying digital land and constructing virtual homes, these activities are currently being conducted in separate environments. Eventually, they will take place in a single environment – the metaverse – with multiple destinations across technologies and experiences.”

Gartner defines a metaverse as a collective virtual shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical and digital reality. It is persistent, providing enhanced immersive experiences, as well as device independent and accessible through any type of device, from tablets to head-mounted displays.

Because no single vendor will own the metaverse, Gartner expects it to have a virtual economy enabled by digital currencies and nonfungible tokens (NFTs). The metaverse will impact every business that consumers interact with every day.

It will also impact how work gets done. Enterprises will provide better engagement, collaboration and connection to their employees through immersive workspaces in virtual offices. Businesses will not need to create their own infrastructure to do so because the metaverse will provide the framework. In addition, virtual events that have gained popularity over the last 18 months will offer more collaborative and immersive networking opportunities and workshops.

“Enterprises will have the ability to expand and enhance their business models in unprecedented ways by moving from a digital business to a metaverse business,” said Resnick. “By 2026, 30 per cent of the organizations in the world will have products and services ready for metaverse.”

The adoption of metaverse technologies is nascent and fragmented, and Gartner cautions organizations about investing heavily in a specific metaverse. “It is still too early to know which investments will be viable in the long term, but product managers should take the time to learn, explore and prepare for a metaverse in order to position themselves competitively,” said Resnick.

Meanwhile in the UAE, the Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) launched the world’s first Metaverse customer happiness service centre at the Arab Health 2022 that took place last month.

Read: UAE’s MoHAP launches world’s first Metaverse customer happiness service centre

Although the full version of the MoHAP MetaHealth platform is expected to be launched by mid-2022, visitors to Arab Health 2022 had the opportunity to instantly teleport into the world of MetaHealth and choose to speak with a real employee from the customer happiness centre.