Global consultancy partnership Kearney has released new data showing revenue predictions and sentiment from senior telecommunications and consumer goods lead around the metaverse.
The report also reveals that many senior leaders are still unsure what form this will take and how this will affect their businesses’ bottom lines.
The Pragmatic Leader’s Guide to the Metaverse reveals that a quarter of European consumer goods and telco leaders (25%) expect to see the metaverse account for revenues of between 5-20% by 2025, rising to more than half (52%) who expect this revenue by 2030. However, exactly how to monetise these emerging concepts remains unclear, constituting a real problem for many leaders, with 84% of telecom leaders and 64% of consumer goods leaders agreeing that companies will need to expand into new markets and channels to ensure relevance in the space.
At the higher end, almost one in 10 (9%) leaders in Europe expect between 20-50% of revenue to originate from the metaverse by 2030.
The Guide draws on qualitative analysis, leveraging insights from 167 senior telecoms and consumer goods decision-makers in companies with 1,000 to 50,000+ employees across Asia Pacific, North America and Europe.
Compared to Europe, only 10% of respondents in North America predicted that between 5-20% of revenue would stem from the metaverse by 2025. This figure then rises to 45% of respondents predicting this level of revenue by 2030.
Overall, 56% of consumer goods leaders and 59% of telco leaders in Europe see the metaverse as having a positive impact on their industry. However, one in four (24%) telco leaders were ‘very’ positive about the metaverse’s impact compared to only 3% of consumer goods professionals, showing that sentiment is still highest in the technology and communications space.
One of the biggest risks leaders associated with the metaverse was cybersecurity, with 57% of telco respondents and 63% of consumer goods European respondents citing this as a high impact risk to the metaverse. Interestingly, regulatory risk was also considered ‘high impact’ by 43% of telco respondents and 27% of consumer goods respondents.
Jesper Larsson, partner at Kearney, said: “Global leaders clearly see the metaverse as a true avenue of growth over the next five to ten years, with some predictions suggesting significant levels of revenue could originate in this virtual marketplace. The key challenge, however, will be how to monetise the platform as a revenue stream.”
“Technologies enabling and supporting the use of the metaverse, such as 5G, could offer potential to overcome this monetisation challenge. Such technologies would support an increased flow of data and satisfy demand, building out the capability of this platform even as they make it more profitable. Indeed, the metaverse could be the very use case that 5G has been waiting on, to realise its true potential.”
Eric Gervet, partner at Kearney, added: “Where once we had been seeing positive global sentiment towards the use of the metaverse as a platform for growth and revenue, inflation and global economic slowdown have put tension on the Tech sector, which requires companies to make trade-offs and pace investments. Doubling down on AI and optimizing EBITDA has become a short-term priority versus longer term investments, at least for the very short term.
“Companies that act now to develop a strategy for how the growth of the metaverse could impact their model will have a significant advantage over the competition in deciding which technologies, partnerships and investments will be necessary to access this revenue stream.”
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