Quick take:
- Mark Zuckerberg says Meta is targeting one to two billion users spending hundreds of dollars by the end of the decade.
- The Meta co-founder and CEO spoke during an interview with Jim Cramer on the CNBC’s Mad Money.
- The company had 3.64 billion monthly active users across its family of apps and platforms in the first quarter of 2022.
Meta recently revealed that it expects to burn more cash this year in its quest to make the metaverse a reality. The social media giant’s bottom line suffered a significant blow in the final quarter of 2021 after investing $10 billion towards the metaverse.
Since then, the company has had nothing of significance to show for its huge investment. However, while a lot of sceptics continue to question Mark Zuckerberg’s unceasing drive to create a metaverse that offers more than just video games and some low-tech 3D worlds, Meta seems to have a definitive plan for making every dollar count.
In an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC’s Mad Money, Zuckerberg said that his company is targeting one to two billion metaverse users each spending hundreds of billions by the end of the decade.
That’s a bold forecast, even for Zuckerberg, considering the nascent state of the industry because a simple calculation tells us the company expects hundreds of billions in revenue from the metaverse by 2030.
“We hope to basically get to around a billion people in the metaverse doing hundreds of dollars of commerce, each buying digital goods, digital content, different things to express themselves, so whether that’s clothing for their avatar or different digital goods for their virtual home or things to decorate their virtual conference room, utilities to be able to be more productive in virtual and augmented reality and across the metaverse overall,” he said.
But looking at the list of potential revenue-generating activities listed in his elongated sentence, the question might not be about whether a person could spend hundreds of dollars in the metaverse a year, but rather, if Meta can get at least a billion people in the metaverse.
Nonetheless, he could point to recent research, which claimed that a quarter of the world’s population will be spending at least an hour in the metaverse per day by 2026. That means at least two billion people will be using the metaverse within the next four years.
Obviously, there are a lot of moving pieces here, including gaming companies that are looking to make an impact.
The report by Gartner failed to specifically predict which segments of the industry will last the short-term turbulence, meaning it may be too early to start projecting future income from segments like metaverse commerce, gaming, fashion etc.
Meta is investing heavily in hardware, software and experiences to make its metaverse dream a reality. However, it latest VR headset tests suggested there is still a long way to go before being able to offer IRL (in-real-life) imagery in the 3D space.
But Zuckerberg and his team aren’t giving up. “We are at this point, you know, a company that can afford to make some big long-term research investments, and this is a big focus,” he said.
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