How the Metaverse Will Reshape the Internet: Stages, Tech Stack, and Industry Impact

Gartner Forecast and the Metaverse’s Emerging Role

According to Gartner, by 2026, 25% of people will spend at least one hour each day in the metaverse for work, shopping, learning, socializing or entertainment. Because the metaverse is not owned by any single vendor, it is expected to generate a virtual economy driven by digital currencies and NFTs, affecting every consumer‑facing enterprise.

Impact on Work and Collaboration

The metaverse will enable immersive virtual offices that facilitate interaction, collaboration and communication, providing a framework that spares enterprises from building their own infrastructure. Recent growth of virtual events over the past 18 months points to more collaborative and immersive workshops.

Why the Metaverse Is Inevitable

Major tech companies, led by Facebook’s strategic shift, have converged on the metaverse as the next internet evolution. The transition can be viewed in three stages.

Technological Drivers

Advances in 5G, AI, blockchain, and VR/AR have reached marginal growth, with increasing 5G penetration, AI compute power, broader blockchain applications, and higher VR hardware shipments laying the foundation for the metaverse ecosystem.

User‑Demand Perspective

Consumers seek richer product experiences; immersive metaverse experiences satisfy this demand better than current 2D screen‑based internet content.

Industry Perspective

With slowing growth of internet user numbers and diminishing traffic dividends, the metaverse’s immersive nature can boost online engagement, user time, and stickiness, creating new volume for the internet sector.

Metaverse Development Path

Short‑term (3‑5 years): Upgrade of existing products, including consumer VR games with deeper immersion and enterprise XR meeting systems that improve productivity.

Long‑term (5‑10 years): Overall internet industry growth as underlying technologies mature, leading to a new traffic pool and ecosystem that spawns next‑generation consumables and content, analogous to how mobile internet expanded beyond PC.

Ultimate (10+ years): The final form remains uncertain, dependent on continued evolution of foundational technologies.

Metaverse Industry Chain – Four Core Layers

1. Underlying Technologies : 5G, cloud computing, AI, blockchain, and chips are essential for large‑scale, low‑latency, and compute‑intensive experiences.

5G and cloud enable massive concurrent users and improve accessibility.

Algorithmic and compute advances upgrade rendering models, narrowing the gap between current 3A games and photorealistic worlds.

AI lowers content‑creation barriers for both professional (PGC) and user‑generated (UGC) assets.

Blockchain provides a closed‑loop virtual economy for asset ownership and trade.

2. Interaction Devices : AR/VR hardware maturity enhances immersion, but current 3D games still rely on 2D displays and conventional input devices, limiting true “synchrony and realism”.

3. Development Platforms : Modern game engines (Unity, Unreal Engine 5) serve as the primary tools for creating metaverse content, evolving from earlier 2D engines (Flash, Cocos2D) to high‑performance 3D pipelines.

4. Applications & Content : The ultimate value lies in end‑user experiences; as underlying tech matures, applications will deliver richer, more immersive services, driving the metaverse’s commercial relevance.

By mapping the metaverse’s stages and industry‑chain layers, the analysis shows that early‑stage product upgrades will dominate the initial phase, with broader internet‑level growth following as technologies converge.