Ericsson’s 2022 Imagine Possible event in Santa Clara brought together leading thinkers and innovators from both technology and enterprise sectors to share their expertise on the future of digital transformation.

One of the main themes explored was the evolution of extended reality (XR) and the metaverse. The event featured discussions on some of today’s most innovative XR use cases, as well as the technological and policy cornerstones required to fully unleash XR’s potential.

Here are five highlights on the future of XR and the metaverse, including insights from leading ecosystem frontrunners including Microsoft, Ikea, Nvidia and more.

1: Think of the metaverse as immersive emotional communication – and 5G underpins it

One of the most inspiring presentations at Imagine Possible featured futurist and strategic digital consultant David Shing, who highlighted the need for a spirit of openness and collaboration as we begin to explore the potential of the metaverse:

“The fundamental challenge today when we move to these new frontiers is that if it stays a closed ecosystem it will fail. It has to be open otherwise we won’t have the collaboration of the cloud. We need to have the community, open data, open relationships, open APIS and all that good stuff you care about.”

He also emphasized that while technology has changed our behaviors, it hasn’t changed the basic human need for connection, which will be key to the success for these new technologies.

“We’re in the business of connecting to people through sight, sound and motion. To do what? Drive emotion. Why? We’re in a commerce society, and 75 percent of purchase decisions are sold emotionally – we sell to the heart to justify to the head.”

And he believes 5G will be the foundation that holds it all together.

“When we talk about the metaverse, it’s really just simply immersive technologies. And the reality is 5G will be the underpinning of it – period, full stop. Some of the concepts we’re talking about today aren’t new – blockchain for example – but we need to corral it all together. We have a centralized experience, but in reality we’re trying to decentralize it so there are less points of failure.”

Imagine Possible Santa Clara – David Shing

2: XR will succeed best if it is humanized, and there are solutions to achieve that

In her “XR now – key insights from leading developer tools and platforms” presentation, Amitha Pulijala, Vice President of Product, Cloud Platform Services, Video API and AI at Vonage, explored the need to humanize XR technology for its full success.

“Two trends merging the physical and digital worlds are firstly a shift in behavior – the pandemic drove us to adapt more digital technologies – and secondly the technology itself, which is evolving super fast. We’ve moved from a 2D interaction to a 3D interaction, and a lot hangs on humanizing these technologies to bring them closer to the physical world.”

While this has already started to happen thanks to the growth of voice interfaces rather than touch-based for example, there is much more still to come:

“We want to take it further now, bringing in human senses to interact with the digital world, human emotions through different senses interacting with the technology, accelerating this merge of digital and human worlds. Technology moves fast and you need APIs and tools to build great services together and drive things forward. APIs are built on the assumption anyone can use them: you can be a consumer of an API or a producer.”

She also argues that along with APIs, 5G and edge computing will be key to overcoming some of the challenges in making XR a consistent, humanized experience.

“There are some challenges building XR applications. You need richer content because you want more context for the applications you’re building, and to add more intelligence to what avatars can do in the virtual space. You need quality too – detail in the XR space has to be precise. And you need to have uniform experience: it can’t be one low bandwidth experience and one high bandwidth experience.  A lot of this is being solved by different APIs that can bring context together, and 5G capabilities from Ericsson: bandwidth, low latency. And the uniform experience with edge computing: rendering has to be split between the device and cloud, so how do you bring some of those rendering capabilities in the cloud at a low latency to your device? That’s done with edge computing.”

Imagine Possible Santa Clara – Amitha Pulijala

3. The metaverse isn’t just the future – it’s already here

The metaverse is often spoken of as a concept for the future, but in his presentation “The role of 5G For Fusing Digital Interactions with Reality”, Nvidia General Manager of Telecoms and 5G Vertical Soma Velayutham emphasized that it is in several cases already here.

“Is the metaverse happening or already here? Here’s an example – a digital avatar customer experience. Nvidia has been working with AT&T who have published digital avatars that have a sense of time and space.”

The digital avatars can work through traditional 2D interaction over a cellphone, he explained, but can also go a step further.

“It can also be transmitted over VR in 3D. So you get a real interaction with a sense of time and space as you would interact with a real person. You can ask the avatar questions, talk to them, and they can provide your service. So the concept of digital avatars is very real and is taking off.”

Imagine Possible Santa Clara – Soma Velayutham

4. Immersive experiences are already driving data usage – ecosystem collaborations can push them further

In the “Ecosystem collaboration for XR success” discussion, Andrew Bennett, AVP 5G Monetization, AT&T explained that their numbers show that immersive experiences like XR are already driving data usage from 5G customers.

“One thing we’ve noticed in the data is that 5G customer session times are 50 percent longer than non-5G customers. Working with you all (Ericsson) we see a lot of data that says data usage on the mobile network is going to double or triple in 5-10 years, a lot of that due to immersive content. Seeing that play out with our customers was a good affirmation that we’re heading in the right direction.”

Sheshadri Amathnadu, Sr Director Venture Capital, SK Telecom recognizes a similar hunger for immersive content in the South Korean market.

“We work with a lot of artists: Korea is well known for K-pop, entertainment, sport is also a big thing. We have artists who come to our studio where we generate 3D imagery that is then immersed into our XR content. Content is the key and what for us drives the consumption on the network. I’m thrilled with the type of content that people consume in South Korea.”

AT&T sees ecosystem collaborations as a powerful way to explore the potential to push that market for immersive content even further through innovation.

“The work we started doing with Ericsson on the Startup 5G program is a really core part of our 5G strategy. We’re a connectivity company and we want to be the best connectivity company out there. Ericsson deal in connectivity and know our business very well. So we’re teaming up to engage the ecosystem and ask ‘who is out there who shares our values and can help build something where connectivity truly builds a better experience for the customer that will resonate?’ We’ve already had a lot of great conversations through the startup program and I’m really excited to see what more we can do together.”

Imagine Possible Santa Clara – Andrew Benett, Sheshadri Amathnadu

5. The impact on retail will be transformative, if access to hardware is secured

Ikea is another example of a global brand already using interactive, immersive technology that is consumer facing. In the “Leaders’ and Experts’ Reflections on XR/Metaverse, Enterprise and 5G” discussion, Ikea Consumer and Customer Insights Manager, Retail Services Ann-Sofie Isaksson explained that advancements like XR and the metaverse are part of a transformation being undergone by retail.

“We’ve talked about the future of the store for a long time, and the store’s purpose continues to change. In one way it has become more functional, while on the other it has become more explorational. We’re exploring a lot of new store formats and what’s common about them, in tandem with where people are in cities, is the formats are getting smaller. So new technology comes into play: how do you show your full product range in a smaller format? Or show the range relevant for the customer who is there at that moment? (Technology is important) to be able to change and curate content in a small store format.”

She notes however that while the possibilities for these technologies to further aid the evolution of retail are exciting, it will be important to ensure the hardware required is easily available for consumers.

“It’s mind-blowing to think about the possibility of taking the store into your home, and the other way around, having your home in a store environment and being able to test and try products. The question of when it will be mainstream is the big one. At Ikea we’re for the many, so we have to make sure this technology is accessible for many. Today, glasses are still expensive and not yet 100 percent fit for purpose.”

Imagine Possible Santa Clara – Ann-Sofie Isaksson

6. XR and the metaverse need further technology enablers for maximum value

In the “Ericsson startup 5G: Innovators shaping the XR/Metaverse Future” discussion, Luis Oscar Ramirez, Founder and CEO, Mawari explained that despite its power, 5G alone is not enough to unlock the full range of potential from XR.

Reducing the need for processing power inside devices will in turn help reduce their size, heightening the potential for immersive experiences, he explained. Mawari, part of the Startup 5G program, already has solutions under way:

“The way Mawari is trying to break technological bottlenecks is to render content in the cloud and stream it to mobile devices, enabling immediate access to XR experiences. We’re challenging the status quo of the current technology stack with a patent-pending technology that comprises a streaming codec which reduces the bandwidth 100x. For a comparison – think about what MP3 did to music audio format.”

Imagine Possible Santa Clara – Luis Oscar Ramirez

7. As exciting as XR and the metaverse are, the need for rigorous standards can’t be overlooked

The increasing uptake of these new technologies is occurring at a time where the very nature of identity is undergoing a continued change. That was one of the messages from the “Renaissance 2.0 – Does Tech have a greater purpose?” discussion with Lila Tretikov, Corporate Vice President/Deputy Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft.

“Identity is undergoing major changes. In the past identity belonged to the government and to an extent still does, then under the last 20-30 years identity started to belong to different companies. I have perhaps 50 different passwords, the ones my browser can remember. But we’re going in a direction where people want to control their identity, own it, know where their data is, how that data is used, and perhaps even one day monetize that data if they decide to.”

But as these technologies continue to become more prevalent and their possibilities expand it will be important to have standards in place, not least to protect users.

“At Microsoft we’re pushing to create some baseline rules everybody has to abide by to protect everyone’s identity. In the Metaverse that’s only going to be more important because in that world I can be anyone I want to be. Figuring out how to be creative, how to be allowed to turn into another being in the magical metaverse of games and social interaction, but at the same time having people protected in that world is something fundamental for us to agree upon and implement correctly. As different metaverses are emerging across the industry, that’s a fundamental thing we need to solve for.”

Imagine Possible Santa Clara – Lila Tretikov

Read more

Watch the Imagine Possible Santa Clara event on demand

Why 5G is key to the success of the metaverse