The Metaverse becoming reality is at least a decade away if not 20-25 years away. The Metaverse as we imagine it is one with rich graphics, hundreds of millions of users and billions of online transactions. There are two primary obstacles preventing this reality:

1. The Metaverse suffers from poor graphics. Content companies including Meta Platforms/Facebook (META) lack the processing power to render ultra-realistic graphics in real-time at scale.
2. Slow broadband speeds are a barrier. Slow broadband speeds significantly impaired Google Stadia adoption. Google Stadia solved the real-time rendering of realistic graphics problem but was hamstrung by customers’ slow broadband speeds. Slow broadband speeds will be a gating factor for many years. (See Internet speeds by country HERE).

Thus, it is not clear that META’s bet-the-company Metaverse bet will ever pay off. A better bet is productivity-centric augmented reality and virtual reality plays from companies such as Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL).

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