Half of the 10 most valuable companies on Earth are making metaverse hardware

Microsoft is reportedly looking to take on Apple’s Vision Pro headset with new hardware it would develop in partnership with Samsung. This would mean that five of the ten most valuable companies by market capitalization — Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia — are currently developing new metaverse gear. 

The Microsoft news comes from a local outlet in South Korea, The Elec. According to the report, Microsoft plans to order hundreds of thousands of OLED panels from Samsung for a device to be mass produced in 2026.

That’s a ways off and, according to The Verge, the device will be a headset meant for spatial computing (as opposed to virtual reality). The Verge also indicated that it was specifically not meant for the metaverse — but, any display device, including a computer monitor, can interface with “the metaverse,” spatial computing devices just offer a different level of immersion.

Metaverse hardware

The metaverse isn’t a singular place any more than the internet is. Those interfacing with metaverse applications have the same options as those interfacing with any other networked form of digital communication: screens. Some screens are big, like TVs, others are small, like the ones inside of a virtual reality headset.

And, despite what the tech media world seems to want you to believe, the market for both “virtual reality” and “metaverse” hardware is expanding.

Marketing hype and confusion over exactly what the “metaverse” is over the past few years has led to the perception that the metaverse is dying. However the evidence suggests otherwise.

Apple is working on a successor to its Vision Pro, a spatial computing company used by more than half of the Fortune 500. Google is working with its old partner, Magic Leap, to develop a new mixed-reality headset, despite the partnership’s past flops.

And Meta, the company that changed its name from “Facebook” in order to signify its shift to creating metaverse technology, is still pouring billions of dollars into its metaverse division. Meanwhile, every inch of territory gained in the quest to onboard the general public into the metaverse represents a win for Nvidia, whose GPUs power both the graphics and artificial intelligence necessary to bring digital universes to life.

Assuming the report from The Elec is accurate, Microsoft’s project brings the total number of companies in the top ten by global market capitalization who are developing new metaverse hardware to five.