The World Economic Forum (WEF) predicts that rather than being embraced by consumers initially, the metaverse will first be used in industrial environments. This prediction was made in an article that was published on January 13. 

The organization predicts that the metaverse will be implemented at an industrial level first, assisting various organizations to carry out designing and monitoring duties more effectively.

According to the WEF, two of the metaverse technologies that will become integral for the industry in this new phase are digital twins and extended reality. Implementing digital twins, the digitalization of a group of elements coming from the real world, will allow testing the functionality of an element, examining the possible inefficiencies of an assembly line, or simply prototyping a model without having to build it physically.

Another technology discussed in the article is extended reality. This will enable designers to combine real-world and digital elements and study how they interact.

The institution emphasizes that these technologies are already being adopted by several companies, including automaker Renault, which launched its industrial metaverse in November, aiming to save $330 million by 2025 with the implementation.

While there is significant focus on the consumer metaverse from companies like Meta, which have been investing billions in the sector, the WEF believes that industries will be the ones pushing innovation.

The article states,

“We will develop many technologies for the industrial metaverse that will make their way into the consumer metaverse – from micro-optics and advanced haptic interfaces to AI sensing awareness.”

The organization also believes that, once these two different metaverses are established, one will be able to improve the other and vice versa. However, it recommends shifting the focus from putting resources into the consumer metaverse, to putting them into the industrial metaverse, which is already happening in various sectors.

The WEF has referred to the metaverse before, issuing recommendations for maintaining safety and privacy in metaverse worlds in May 2022, especially when including children as part of these environments.