Samsung Keeps Up the Metaverse Talk
At Samsung Electronics’ (005930.KS) shareholder meeting the company once again indicated that the Metaverse was one of two areas that it has selected as new growth businesses (the other is robotics). Samsung’s Vice Chairman indicated that he would actively seek business opportunities in Metaverse which sparked renewed speculation that the company was preparing to announce or release a “Metaverse Device”, as he indicated last month at Mobile World Congress. As we noted previously, no specifics were given although we noticed that the company’s Metaverse site 837X (Decentraland) is closed until March 21 when a new event is planned. While this could be nothing more than new merchandise, it would be a good place to drop a few hints to the AR/VR community.
Given the extreme hype surrounding the Metaverse and Samsung’s expertise and history in the display space, it is easy to connect the dots as to Samsung’s eventual plans however as we noted in our 3/1/22 note, Samsung has been in and out of the VR space before and will likely take a more realistic approach to the AR/VR space in this go-round. However they cannot keep the Metaverse chatter going forever without a distinct product so we expect at least a glimpse of a product before the holidays this year. If nothing occurs by the end of 2Q we expect there will be a slew of questions as to why such a device/product has not been revealed and pressure on management will be intense, so unless we are wrong and the current Metaverse talk is just ‘Chairman Speak’ (Why promise if nothing is almost ready?) Samsung should be back in the VR/AR world this year.
Given the extreme hype surrounding the Metaverse and Samsung’s expertise and history in the display space, it is easy to connect the dots as to Samsung’s eventual plans however as we noted in our 3/1/22 note, Samsung has been in and out of the VR space before and will likely take a more realistic approach to the AR/VR space in this go-round. However they cannot keep the Metaverse chatter going forever without a distinct product so we expect at least a glimpse of a product before the holidays this year. If nothing occurs by the end of 2Q we expect there will be a slew of questions as to why such a device/product has not been revealed and pressure on management will be intense, so unless we are wrong and the current Metaverse talk is just ‘Chairman Speak’ (Why promise if nothing is almost ready?) Samsung should be back in the VR/AR world this year.
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