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U+ Kids Zoo, a virtual zoo, will be unveiled later this year South Korea’s LG Uplus Corp. will target specific groups of customers such as office workers and preschoolers for its metaverse platforms, setting it apart from frontrunners Naver Corp. and SK Telecom Co., the company said on Tuesday.The country’s third-largest telecom company will release the early versions of virtual offices and zoos on its digital platforms by the end of this year. They will be commercialized from next year.As a latecomer in the three-dimensional virtual world, LG Uplus will zoom in on niche markets, utilizing its plenty of kids content in which it has a competitive advantage over rival companies.U+ Kids Zoo will provide virtual reality experiences with 30 types of wild animals and 20 extinct species of dinosaurs.U+ Virtual Office is a platform tailored to those who work remotely. It allows the users to undergo their daily office routines from going to the office to getting off, as well as holding group or one-on-one meetings. U+Virtual Office will be released for commercial use from next year NFT COMMUNITYTo venture into the non-fungible token (NFT) market, LG Uplus will create NFT products based on its original animated character Mooner and launch its trading platform.It will become the country’s first telecom service provider to open an NFT marketplace, while its bigger rival SK Telecom is also working on a similar service.Metaverse is becoming a hot market for telecom companies, online platforms and gaming developers. The 3D digital platform could evolve into a comprehensive marketplace and facilitate diversification into other related businesses. South Korea’s metaverse market is being led by Naver’s Zepeto and SK Telecom’s ifland.Since its inception in 2018, Zepeto has become Asia’s largest metaverse platform with over 300 million cumulative users as of March of this year. The number of its monthly active users (MAU) stood at 20 million at the time.ifland, introduced in July 2021, recorded 1.35 million MAUs as of March of this year. It is now looking to go abroad in cooperation with a global telecom company.Last week, SK Telecom and its spin-off investment firm SK Square Co. announced a plan to launch a metaverse platform in Europe, in partnership with Europe’s largest telecommunications provider Deutsche Telekom.The world’s metaverse market is forecast to grow by 16 times to 1,820 trillion won ($1.4 trillion) by 2030 from 113 trillion won in 2021, according to PwC, a consulting firm.By Sungsu Baebaebae@hankyung.comYeonhee Kim edited this article
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