The metaverse is no longer just science fiction. This hot topic has been buzzing for years, sparking debates about its potential and feasibility. The goal is the seamless convergence of the digital and physical to transform the way we interact with the world around us.
However, is this just hype, or is it becoming a reality? This article will explore this question and help highlight why the metaverse is not only real but poised to be game-changer.
Decoding the metaverse
The metaverse comes in various forms:
- Consumer metaverse: Allows brands to engage with consumers in a virtual world
- Enterprise metaverse: Introduces gamification to employee interactions, enabling virtual meetings, employee onboarding and customer engagement
- Industrial metaverse: A broader concept intertwining physical and digital realities, enabling humans to interact with physical elements remotely or virtually in a simulated environment
Consumer and enterprise metaverse adoption hasn’t picked up as much as the hype that was created, largely due to the availability and affordability of the Extended Reality (XR) devices with consumers, and the lack of those killer applications like a Pokémon Go for end users. However, the industrial metaverse, which is more suitable for manufacturing industries and engineering organizations, is seeing large-scale adoption.
The industrial metaverse leverages technologies like digital twins, IIOT/IOT and XR including augmented, virtual and mixed reality to create digital replicas of physical assets such as factory plants, equipment, infrastructure, manufacturing processes and logistical networks.
This will enable the creation of virtual representations of physical space, where use cases like virtual factory walk throughs, collaborative planning and validation of complex 3D designs, training, process simulation, guided remote operations or robotics training can be implemented.
Industrial metaverse expansion
The industrial metaverse is a rapidly growing reality where immersive technologies like XR are revolutionizing everything from manufacturing and maintenance to training and collaboration.
According to a report from World Economic Forum, Navigating the Industrial Metaverse, the market potential for the industrial metaverse is projected to reach around $100 billion by 2030, with solutions and services alone growing by 22.8% to $6.3 billion by the same year. And the recent study report published by Siemens and S&P Global Market Intelligence 451 also released research on the industrial metaverse that indicates in 2024 around 62 % of companies are increasing their investment for industrial metaverse technologies.
Incorporating immersive and spatial experience to Industry 4.0
The industrial metaverse brings additional innovative capabilities to the Industry 4.0 initiative.
Industry 4.0 aims to bring digitalization, automation, AI-based decision-making and efficiency to the industrial processes. The industrial metaverse brings a new dimension of immersion that combines the real world and virtual world where humans can collaborate and interact in these worlds. The result is:
- Data is consumed as immersive content
- Moving from 2D to 3D to provide a spatial experience
- From data analysis to experience
Market trends: What industry leaders are doing
The metaverse is now a topic of discussion across various organizational levels, from boardrooms to factory floors. The best indicator of whether it is just hype, or the future is observing what industry leaders are doing:
- Siemens & Sony: At the CES 2025, announced partnership on immersive engineering for industrial metaverse and launched new software tools along with Sony XR HMD.
- Google: In partnership with Samsung and Qualcomm, announced the Android XR platform for headsets and glasses
- NVIDIA: Jensen Huang, at GTC 2024, stated that the metaverse will be a new economy larger than the current one and believes it will be "much, much bigger" than the physical world.
These high-profile announcements have sparked greater interest in metaverse technologies, catalyzing growth in this space. In fact, HCLTech’s Tech Trends 2024 report lists the metaverse as one of the top 10 emerging technologies that businesses should adopt. According to this report, the metaverse with XR technology will break the physical boundaries and create a digital replica of the real environment that is a dynamic, immersive and provides a highly engaging collaborative experiences.
Present vs future vision
Extended reality technologies have been evolving, with many organizations adopting them at varying levels of maturity. While challenges exist in scaling these technologies, industry leaders and solution providers are addressing these issues. Companies are:
- Developing visions and strategies for implementation
- Seeking integrated platforms to support multiple use cases
- Investing in infrastructure upgrades, such as GPU-based systems and high-bandwidth networks like 5G
- Utilizing GenAI-based applications to drive XR and industrial metaverse (IMV) adoption
Bridging the gap from hype to the reality
The industrial metaverse offers a wide range of use cases cutting across the business value chain within an organisation. Some of the key use cases include virtual collaborative engineering for the NPD and R&D teams, workforce virtual training, remote maintenance and collaborative decision making for manufacturing operations, product visualization and virtual space walk through for marketing and customer engagement and the AR-based guided instructions for aftermarket and field support.
HCLTech is positioned as leader in offering Digital Twin and immersive experience through Extended Reality (XR) services the two key technology enablers for industrial metaverse solutions. Through the in-house solution accelerators, such as XTERN SDP (Service Delivery Platform) and MetaTwin, we offer an integrated platform to build the Industrial Metaverse and XR solutions at scale that can support deploying multiple use cases.
A future of fusion
The industrial metaverse is not a distant reality; it is a fusion of existing technologies creating a revolutionary concept. This innovation has the power to change traditional methods of interaction, collaboration and experiences within organizations. As adoption widens and scales up, the industrial metaverse is set to deliver unparalleled economic benefits, higher employee productivity, increased customer satisfaction and environmentally friendly, sustainable solutions for organizations.
