China’s top tech companies are starting to respond aggressively to the call of the emerging metaverse market, as seen with their counterparts in the United States. Some companies showing interest in this recent move are ByteDance, NetEase, Tencent, and Alibaba, the top four top and best-performing companies in China. Industry reports making rounds revealed that these companies are competing to come up with something to impress the metaverse market.

They are either coming up with a software,  device, or both, development experts say will forever change the Chinese metaverse business.

Morgan Stanley: a US-based, internationally acclaimed investment management and financial services company; their report on the Chinese metaverse industry estimated that the China metaverse market would be worth over $8 trillion if fully established. To prove the country’s fast acquaintance with this emerging technology, they have carved out a name for it, “Yuan yu zhou,” which is a direct Chinese translation of metaverse.

Smaller Companies Crawling in

The “Yuan yu zhou” buzzword has metamorphosed into technical jargon; thus, it has been adopted by many private businesses that have picked interest in the metaverse technology. The China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) has disclosed that it has recorded over 16,000 trademark applications that have the “Yuan yu zhou” term in February 2022. Also, the current metaverse has a long way to go in replicating the real-life image; efforts are still on the ground to make that happen. Such innovation is hoped to happen in Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR).

According to a chief analyst of global technologies at the Shanghai-based TF Securities Karin Kong, gaming and social networking sum up the top sectors that will experience their first stage of metaverse integration. He further stated that this idea will run until 2030.

What the Big Companies are Doing

In the company’s way of meeting the recent development, Tencent plans to take advantage of its over a billion WeChat user base. In January, the company stepped up its game in its quest to penetrate the metaverse industry with the introduction of Unreal Engine. Unreal Engine has been named the world’s second-biggest video game engine, and Tencent is working on getting it embedded in their QQ messaging platform. The company, before now, has introduced the “Super QQ Show:” an interactive feature that allows app users to customize their 3D avatars to make them more sociable, purchase products like VR gear, and play games.

From what is gathered so far about Tencent and their journey into the metaverse business, reports have it that they have a 40% interest in Epic Games, the main developers of Unreal Engine. This feature has been used in two known blockbuster movies: Bioshock and Fortnite. The presence of Unreal Engine analysts will give Tencent a strong advantage over its competitors in 3D design-for-metaverse capacity. To further prove Tencent’s eagerness to succeed, they have staked large investments in local and international companies that they have perceived to have a metaverse potential. Such companies include Activision Blizzard, Roblox, and Snap.