Chongqing- The China Metaverse Industry Development Forum kicked off in southwestern China's Chongqing Municipality on April 26. The metaverse market is gradually opening up and approaching the critical point of explosive growth. Chongqing is likely to seize the opportunity to take the lead in the market.

The so-called metaverse refers to a virtual world linked and created by scientific and technological approaches, mirrors, and interacts with the real world.

Multiple applications of metaverse technology

A designer sitting at his desk can visit an unfurnished new house in an instant. With a wave of his hand, the place is decorated. With another wave of his hand, he can scroll through a dozen different decoration options.

It is hard to believe that these scenes, which look like post-production effects, are live streaming scenes. This magic is one of the metaverse technologies displayed by Sheencity (Chongqing) Technology Co., Ltd. at the forum held at Xiantao International Big Data Valley, Yubei District. The company has developed a metaverse design platform, Mars. It has attracted 1,500 design institutes and 200,000 designers at home and abroad.

Metaverse technology has worked out in entertainment, architectural design, industrial production, video shooting, games, tourism, live streaming, and education, which have brought positive changes to society.

For example, streamers can seamlessly integrate into various virtual scenarios for product promotion in live streaming. As for entertainment, people can enter the 3D virtual techniques, interact with animated icons and movie and TV characters, take photos, and make situation movies and short films.

Tan Jianrong, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that with the gradual application of metaverse technologies, metaverse had turned a sci-fi concept into an industry.

A broad prospect for industrial development

Metaverse became a hit in 2021. Today, the metaverse industry is still in its infancy, and the sector's scale is relatively small. But looking ahead, industry insiders are optimistic about the prospect of the metaverse.

iFlytek, a Chinese company leading the way in the voiceprint recognition area, can create a virtual Deng Lijun singing, a passed-away famous Chinese singer also known as Teresa Teng, on stage with other real-life singers based on its technology and metaverse features.

The global metaverse industry is about to emerge and thrive. It is predicted that in 2024, the industry will be worth 800 billion US dollars, according to a report from Bloomberg Intelligence.

Foreign companies such as Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Facebook march into the industry. Since October last year, Facebook has planned to integrate its multiple social platforms to create a new social platform for the 3D virtual world. At the beginning of this year, Microsoft spent 68.7 billion US dollars to acquire Blizzard Entertainment. It officially competed for the metaverse market.

Chinese enterprises Tencent, Netease, and ByteDance, are not far behind. In August 2021, ByteDance bought Pixsoul, a VR company, with 1.5 billion US dollars to accelerate the layout of the metaverse industry. In November of the same year, the China Mobile Communications Association Metaverse Consensus Circle was unveiled, marking China's first metaverse industry association. Its members include China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom.

Chongqing seizes market opportunities

In recent years, Chongqing has laid a good foundation for the industrial development of metaverse.

On the one hand, Chongqing has built about 73,000 5G base stations, over 38 national Internet backbone direct connection cities, and the China-Singapore (Chongqing) Dedicated Connectivity Channel and is speeding up the construction of the mountain city chain, a municipal blockchain base.

On the other, Chongqing has successfully been approved to construct the Chengdu-Chongqing national computing hub of China's integrated computing network. It is accelerating the national computing network to synergize east and west. Chongqing has 450,000 servers under operation right now.

In 2021, the added value of the digital industry in Chongqing increased by 27%, and multiple digital economy industrial parks were established.

Next, Chongqing will take Xiantao International Big Data Valley as the carrier to build the Chongqing Pilot Metaverse Zone for building an ecological industrial park in the metaverse. Chongqing Industrial Intelligence Research Institute of Metaverse is underway. The institute will explore the cutting-edge technological innovation of the metaverse. Chongqing will also explore cross-platform application scenarios such as open city security, intelligent transportation, front-line governance, and smart culture and tourism.