LONDON-- September 28, 2022 -- Arthur D. Little (ADL) has published The Metaverse, beyond fantasy, the latest in a series of new reports from the company running under the ‘Blue Shift’ banner, which explore the impact of new technologies on business, society and humans.

The Metaverse, Beyond Fantasy looks beyond the hype and delivers a realistic picture of the Metaverse for businesses, focusing in particular on the technologies necessary to enable it.

While the Metaverse is not a new concept, the past few years have seen a rapid acceleration of both development and adoption, driven by the convergence of three industries: gaming; collaboration and productivity tools; and social media and networks. Yet while the size of the Metaverse market is difficult to estimate, the report emphasizes that companies should not underestimate its potential importance to their business.

The report looks at the key enabling technologies of the Metaverse, including artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain, and provides a six-layer architectural framework for understanding the Metaverse’s current development status. While the report concludes that businesses today face a world of unconnected proto-metaverses, with technological challenges remaining, it also urges them to take steps now to understand the current market and position themselves for the future.

Dr. Albert Meige, Director of Blue Shift at Arthur D. Little, comments: “The Metaverse is essentially the future version of the internet, with new technologies poised to transform online usage and business models in the same way that the smartphone revolutionized the web. And while we are still about a decade away from a complete, fully immersive version of the Metaverse, huge opportunities already exist. The question is, how to grasp them?

“This report delivers an unprecedented analysis of the technological and business maturity of the Metaverse. And some of the conclusions it reaches differ quite widely from what other commentators have said previously.”