Meta Confirms Digital Collectibles Strategy
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is set to continue its plans to bring digital collectables to consumers due to the recent sharp drop in the cryptocurrency market. The firm’s new head of fintech said the company’s plans around NFTs are the same.
The opportunity Meta sees is the hundreds of millions or billions of people using apps today to be able to collect digital collectables and millions of creators who can potentially create virtual and digital goods. According to him, the blockchain industry completed a “hype cycle”. At such times the initial enthusiasm dissipates in a bear market and many sectors do not survive.
Meta saw NFTs as an opportunity to attract creators to Facebook or Instagram. Those who might otherwise gravitate towards TikTok by giving them a way to monetize their content. The social media giant made its ambitions for the digital asset industry clear last October. The firm changed its corporate name from Facebook to Meta. This indicates the firm’s plans to create a metaverse in which digital collectors represented by NFTs buy, sell and collect. Earlier in the month, Meta began testing Polygon and Ethereum-based NFTs among select users on Facebook.
Meta and Digital Strategy
At the same time, IDC predicts that Meta will lose its dominant share of the VR market in the coming years. It is worth noting that the industry is growing rapidly. In Q1 2022, global VR headset shipments grew by 241.6 percent year-on-year. Meta continues to dominate the market on the back of the success of the Quest 2 headset. The firm now has 90 percent of the market, according to IDC. Currently, the biggest competitor is Pico. However, it only has only a 4.5 percent market share.
Experts expect ByteDance’s expansion outside of China into European markets to help attract a larger audience in the coming quarters. Part of Meta’s success is due to the headphones’ attractive price compared to the competition. However, to achieve these prices and attract new customers, Firm A subsidizes the hardware. Meta continues to pour dollars into metaverse development. However, experts believe that the strategy of promoting cheap hardware at the expense of profitability is not sustainable in the long run.
The supply of VR headsets may continue throughout 2022. In total, it will reach 13.9 million. This is a 26.6 percent increase compared to last year. In the future, all eyes will be on Apple as the company releases its first pair of headphones next year. It is tempting to imagine that the company is shipping high volumes. However, it should be noted that this is a first-of-its-kind headset aimed primarily at a small audience of early adopters. Further iterations will likely show an evolution that will grow by leaps and bounds.
