A report by Nokia and EY showed business leaders are confident in the long-term potential of metaverse use cases in the industrial and enterprise sectors, with the UK and US taking an early lead for applications in the workplace.

The vendor and consultancy conducted a survey targeting 860 executives from the two countries, in addition to Brazil, Germany, Japan and South Korea focusing on four sectors: automotive; industrial goods and manufacturing; transportation, supply chains and logistics; and power and utilities.

Nokia found 58 per cent of companies investing in the metaverse have already deployed the technology at least once, and 94 per cent of businesses that haven’t are planning to do so in the next two years.

Nearly all respondents claimed the use of metaverse-related technology brings “additional innovative capabilities” to advance Industry 4.0 monetisation and use cases.

Companies from the US, and the UK are leading the way when it comes to having deployed or piloted at least one industrial or enterprise metaverse use case at 65 per cent and 64 per cent respectively, followed by Brazil at 63 per cent.

Respondents from Germany stood at 53 per cent, while Asia Pacific “is less advanced”, with Japan and South Korea accounting for 49 per cent.

Companies already using metaverse technology such as XR headsets or digital twins identified capex reduction, sustainability and safety as key benefits, claiming they have seen improvements in these areas after deployments.

Respondents from the industrial sector also claimed XR and metaverse-enabled tools can support skills training, advance R&D projects and product prototyping.

The report comes at a time when hype around the metaverse has made a comeback following the launch of Apple’s Vision Pro spatial computing XR headset.