A metaverse for everyone, through collaboration and interoperability

We are at the beginning of an exciting journey, where the metaverse will bring together various technologies to fuse the physical and digital worlds, widely impacting society and the economy. In the current pre-metaverse era, we only see the very first use cases and applications providing compelling experiences to few selected industries such as gaming. Realizing the full potential of the metaverse and making it available to the masses requires enormous amounts of work and technology development. As we move forward, industrial and enterprise adoption will be followed by consumers embracing the new era. 

Phases of metaverse evolution

We believe that this evolution will happen in stages, after new technologies, such as next generation networks and cloud computing, have reached their full potential, generating exponential combined benefits. 
At Nokia we have developed a model describing the evolution of the metaverse in four different phases, each driven by market needs, recognizing that the scope of the metaverse is almost limitless and has the potential to fuel device and application proliferation.
In each phase we consider user experiences and application potential, as well as technology enablers, such as networking, digital twins, devices and form factors. 
The four development phases of metaverse deployments are:
1.    Pre-Metaverse - 2020 to 2024
2.    Industry & Enterprise Metaverse - 2024 onwards
3.    Consumer Metaverse - 2026 onwards
4.    Universal Metaverse - 2030 onwards