Does the past of smartphones foreshadow the future of the metaverse?

The Metaverse is on the rise, and its hot scene seems familiar, just like the smartphone industry that was just beginning in the early 21st century. Smartphones allow people to experience digital life, and the Metaverse will further bring a full-sensory, immersive upgrade experience, creating a sustainable digital virtual space parallel to the real world.

At present, many people may feel that the metaverse is too far away or even a little unreal, but in fact, the birth and development paths of new things are often similar. Looking at the rise of the smartphone industry, we may be able to understand this more deeply and make the development of the metaverse traceable.

Coincidentally: The Metaverse is a mirror image of the early days of smartphones

The current stage of the Metaverse shares many characteristics with the early days of the smartphone industry.

One of the similar characteristics: the background and technical basis of its rise.

In the period of weak growth of the Internet, all walks of life are constantly discussing the future form of the Internet. The Metaverse and smartphones have become highly anticipated game changers, carrying the hopes of mankind for the future at different times. As the natural product of technological development, smartphones were initially seen as the superposition and upgrade of traditional mobile phones, PDAs and wireless Internet technologies, while the Metaverse is also the culmination of existing cutting-edge technologies such as data intelligence, virtual reality and interactive technology. Both are the result of long-term accumulation and are not created out of thin air.

Similar feature 2: The process and key elements of the outbreak.

The process of smartphones becoming a popular track is very similar to the metaverse. Simon, the world's first recognized smartphone, was launched in 1994. After a dormant period of nearly ten years, the smartphone industry gradually emerged in the early 21st century. With the layout of the smartphone industry by manufacturers such as Motorola, Dopod, and Nokia, people saw the broad market prospects of smartphones. Capital and technology companies have joined the market, gradually forming a situation of flourishing, and ushered in the smartphone boom around 2005.

The same is true for the Metaverse. The term "Metaverse" began to become clear in 2021, many years after its birth. From Facebook changing its name to Meta to many technology giants entering the Metaverse business, a huge whirlwind has also swept the capital markets from the United States to China. In a short period of time, there have been many financing and M&A cases of Metaverse-related companies, and the stock prices of listed companies in the Metaverse concept sector have also skyrocketed. Its popularity is even greater than that of smartphones.

Hardware, content and platform are the three key points for the outbreak of the information industry. In the early days of smartphone development, the performance parameters and function richness of smartphones were constantly refreshed in just a few years, and mobile communication networks and content providers also boosted the development of smartphones. However, at this time, consumers' product awareness of smartphones was still at a low level, and the market was still in the start-up stage. The real outbreak point of smartphones was the emergence of Apple phones. On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple, released the first generation of iPhone, which detonated the market. Smartphones began to spread rapidly and became the most watched consumer electronics industry. Apple has also gradually become a platform-type and ecosystem-level enterprise, with the world's largest market value. On January 3, 2022, Apple's market value once exceeded 3 trillion US dollars, which was higher than the total market value of the German stock market and the total size of the British economy.

At present, the hardware of the Metaverse industry has been prepared for a decade, and the content has also begun to explode. The "platform for the interaction between the virtual world and the real world" has become the focus of the next step of development. The explosive platform products that can integrate efficient hardware and high-quality content will become the key to the explosion of the Metaverse. Platform-type and ecosystem-level enterprises will inevitably be born, and we are looking forward to the next "mature apple" being born in China.

Similar feature three: the impact and strategic significance.

Both will have a profound impact on the development of human civilization. Whether it is smartphones or the metaverse, they are not limited to the evolution of technology. Their rise will inevitably lead to a comprehensive innovation of business models and industrial chains, bringing about profound changes in lifestyles, production methods and even social structures. In addition, both are epoch-making. The popularity of smartphones has greatly promoted the innovative development of mobile Internet, and now the metaverse may point to the ultimate form of the Internet, becoming a strategic high ground in the construction of the future digital ecosystem.

Building on the past and forging ahead: The development path of the metaverse inspired by smartphones

The development of the smartphone industry provides path reference and experience inspiration for the metaverse industry.

First, connect with the locals and win popularity. In the early days of smartphone development, commercial machines were mainly aimed at corporate users and provided business software services. The emergence of Apple's iPhone redefined the way of human-computer interaction, allowing smartphones to win the favor of ordinary consumers, which really triggered the climax of smartphones. As the entrance to the metaverse, smart wearable devices are still somewhat high-brow and unpopular nowadays. The future upgrade path should take into account both price and immersive experience. Ordinary consumers are the key force for market growth. If you want to truly touch the metaverse, you still need to look forward to the emergence of consumer-grade hit products.

Second, software and hardware go hand in hand and complement each other. The upgrade and iteration of the operating system go hand in hand with the development of smartphone hardware devices. The Metaverse also needs multiple industry lines to go hand in hand, including hardware such as head-mounted displays and all-in-one machines, software such as databases and applications, and content such as social and entertainment. With the improvement of production technology, after the hardware has developed to a certain level, the focus of the industry will gradually shift to software platforms and content ecology.

Third, unify standards and interconnect. The Metaverse should also learn from the lessons of the development of smartphones and solve the problems of scene islands and data governance left over from the smartphone era. Interconnection is a major difficulty in building the Metaverse. Preliminary research and social experiments on supervision and rules should be conducted between countries and industries as early as possible to establish interoperable standard specifications and interface protocols, so that production and creation can be carried out more efficiently.

Fourth, we should prevent problems before they happen, and “build before breaking”. In the era of smartphones and mobile Internet, the monopoly of giants has been criticized, and “decentralization” has become a deep call for the era of the Metaverse. Today, leading technology companies are scrambling for the first opportunity in the Metaverse, which inevitably makes people worry whether it will be similar to the mobile Internet, and eventually form a “centralized” enterprise or even a complex in a larger sense, thereby exacerbating social problems such as uneven development and the digital divide. Therefore, the issue of governance is the first issue that the development of the Metaverse industry should consider, and “build before breaking” is the solution that should be considered for the advancement of the Metaverse industry.

Changing lanes and overtaking: Metaverse is expected to make up for the shortcomings of Chinese smartphones

Looking back at the development of my country's Internet, we can find that Chinese companies are good at using existing technologies to quickly innovate applications, but there are few "evangelists" and lack category-creating concepts and endogenous innovation mechanisms like Apple. This phenomenon should also trigger a deep reflection on my country's education model and innovation dynamics. The birth of Apple's "explosive" mobile phone also benefited from the right time of launch. At that time, China did not have the mature conditions for creating "explosive" in terms of network infrastructure, technological innovation capabilities, and residents' consumption level, which also prevented my country from seizing the opportunity of smart phones.

Today, a new round of development opportunities of "changing lanes and overtaking" is in front of my country. The metaverse requires the coordinated construction of underlying technology, hardware equipment and content ecology. my country is known for its content ecology. The foundation laid by the leading domestic Internet platforms in the mobile Internet era in social interaction, content production, user traffic and other aspects has become a first-mover advantage in the metaverse era. On the technical level, my country's "new infrastructure" policy has promoted the construction of back-end infrastructure such as 5G networks and cloud computing in the metaverse. At the front-end equipment level, although the entire industry chain as a whole still needs to be improved, China already has certain advantages in the field of intelligent component manufacturing in the upstream of the industry chain.

In general, my country should focus on seeking breakthroughs in high-tech and cutting-edge technologies in the future to avoid the dilemma of being controlled by others in the fields of chip technology and operating systems in the era of smartphones. In addition, attention should be paid to the differences between China and the West in cultural background, social foundation, and political and legal aspects, and potential risks such as the normativeness of the decentralized ecosystem and the marginalization of the international division of labor system should be studied and judged, so as to explore a metaverse development path with Chinese characteristics.

Although the Metaverse is a cross-cutting industry that is much broader and more ambitious than smartphones, and the Metaverse we can currently imagine is likely to be only a subset of the future digital world. However, the experience and lessons of the development of the smartphone industry are valuable assets that the Metaverse can learn from.

We all hope that the "killer hit application" of the Metaverse will be produced as soon as possible. The universe came into being after the Big Bang. Will the next revolutionary product similar to the iPhone come from the hands of IT veterans or upstarts? Everything remains unknown. But what can be predicted is that one or more companies with a market value of $10 trillion are already in the making. We hope that on the journey to the future digital world, more Chinese figures will stand out and lead us to the sea of ​​stars where human life consciousness is immortal.