Silicon Valley wants to introduce metaverse standards

Meta, Microsoft and 35 other corporations want to create an industry standard for the Metaverse. However, one company is missing – Apple.

The rebranding of Facebook to Meta has opened a veritable race to create the first fully functional metaverse. Fundamentally, there are two ideological approaches at odds. Community Driven vs. Corporate Driven, Decentralized vs. Centralized, Crypto vs. Corporations. The latter now want to join forces and create a uniform industry standard for the establishment of the digital parallel worlds.

To this end, the companies launched the Metaverse Standards Forum. The conglomerate includes tech giants such as Microsoft or Meta, games manufacturers such as Epic Games, but also corporations from other economic sectors such as IKEA. A total of 37 companies belong to the organization. Together, they want to focus on “pragmatic, action-oriented projects” to create uniform standards for AR and VR technologies, for example, and thus make Metaversen interoperable.

Interestingly, despite prominent Metaverse projects such as The Sandbox or Decentraland, one looks in vain for a representative from the crypto space. However, the forum is open to everyone, according to the website.

Apple? Missing

While the founding members come from a wide variety of industries, one company does not appear on the list, but market observers believe it will play a future leadership role in the Metaverse – Apple.

The tech giant is keeping a low profile on the topic of virtual worlds, but CEO Tim Cook let it slip in January that the company is working on “innovation” and “emerging technologies. The word “metaverse” was not mentioned, but according to Bloomberg, Apple is working on its own headset that will include both AR and VR elements. Market observers see this as a hint. However, there has not yet been an official presentation.

With such a step, Apple would put itself in direct competition with Meta. The social media company made the Metaverse a prestige project and has since invested billions in research and development. However, it remains to be seen to what extent a new competitive situation could arise here.

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