An attendee wears a Lenovo augmented actuality headset whereas enjoying the ‘Star Wars: Jedi Challenges’ … [+]
Anthony Kwan/Bloomberg
China’s Lenovo is planning to take a position billions of {dollars} over the following 5 years on analysis and improvement for brand spanking new know-how, together with services associated to the fast-growing metaverse area.
R&D employees on the world’s largest private laptop firm will work on “know-how which can assist companies capitalize on the metaverse,” Lenovo mentioned in an announcement final week. The corporate says the funding ought to assist “companies of all sizes capitalize on new and rising applied sciences just like the metaverse.”
The Beijing-based firm will spend about $15.7 billion on new tech-related R&D over the following 5 years, reported Nikkei Asia. Lenovo mentioned in its assertion that it’s going to double R&D funding and add 12,000 professionals over the approaching three years for cloud-related analysis. Cloud know-how is a possible ingredient of metaverse improvement.
The metaverse refers to a nascent however exploding digital world the place individuals work and play via avatars. The metaverse market was value about $45 billion in 2020 and will develop to $596 billion by 2027, forecasts Brandessence Market Analysis. The consultancy factors to the booms in blended actuality and on-line training fueling the metaverse’s progress.
Lenovo has executed little with the metaverse up to now, notes Brady Wang, Taipei-based affiliate director with market analysis agency Counterpoint Analysis. The corporate may play on present strengths to develop servers and cloud-related know-how for the metaverse, he says.
Different metaverse components, reminiscent of networking and cryptocurrency, could take off quicker if Lenovo invests straight in exterior corporations reasonably than doing its personal R&D, says Wang. “Each firm is completely different in its strategy and it’s not simple to completely rely upon oneself,” he provides. “We gained’t suppose connectivity is simply too good as a result of Lenovo isn’t a connectivity firm, in order that they’d have to spend money on it. For digital actuality, it’s the identical factor.”
Lenovo didn’t reply to a request for remark concerning the firm’s ambitions for the metaverse.
Perfecting particular person elements of the metaverse as a substitute of pursuing an end-to-end digital platform will in all probability make a “greater influence” for the likes of Lenovo, says Sean Su, an impartial tech sector analyst in Taiwan.
Su says using digital actuality to interpret knowledge would notably stand out. In any other case, he says, Lenovo’s technique could be “precisely the identical as everybody else, a shotgun and a prayer that they’re going to stumble on one thing nice.”
Lenovo’s international PC gross sales that took off round 2012 nonetheless high market share charts. It was the world’s largest PC vendor within the first quarter with a 22.7{46db92f0594575df3d215eccaa7725abcd5fb4ad4223f5f7ab1aaaf8ca1b65c0} market share, in keeping with IDC knowledge. Lenovo chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing was a billionaire till 2016.
