BIG PICTURE

HoloLens 2 and the industrial metaverse Toyota Applied Technology Research Lab, North America

Microsoft’s pioneering VR technologies are being deployed across many of Toyota’s American manufacturing sites to improve the efficiency of their automotive assembly processes.

By utilising the HoloLens 2 (Microsoft’s mixed-reality headset), teams across the country have been able to collaborate, conduct training, and solve critical problems faster.

Currently, teams at six of the US Toyota Logistics Centres are using the HoloLens 2. In the near future, these headsets will be implemented in sites across Canada and Mexico, with further expansion plans already in the works.

It's

BY THE NUMBERS

58%

OF CONSUMER ELECTRONIC SHOPPERS WANT TO BUY GADGETS THROUGH THE METAVERSE 

These figures come from a new survey conducted by Outform, which also revealed that 45% of shoppers purchasing consumer electronics believe that the metaverse represents the future of shopping.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

THE GENDER GAP IN METAVERSE LEADERSHIP ROLES 

Looking at how gender dynamics are playing out in the early stages of the metaverse, research by McKinsey found an already discernible gender gap. Less than 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, only 17% of venture capital (VC) dollars go to women-led and women co-led companies, while just 15% of VC general partners in the US are women.

94% OF THE WORLD’S ‘UNCONNECTED’ POPULATION LIVES IN LMICS 

In The State of Mobile Internet Connectivity report 2022, GSMS revealed that 95% of the world’s population is now covered by a mobile broadband network. At the end of 2021, the coverage gap represented 5% of the world’s population. Although this was successfully reduced in 2022, it was only at a pace of 1 percentage point (pp) per year between 2018 and 2021.

GOOGLE, AMAZON, ORACLE AND MICROSOFT GAIN PENTAGON CONTRACT 

The Pentagon has announced that it has awarded its cloud computing contract – which could reach a ceiling value of $9bn – to Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle

All of the four successful companies had been sent requests for bids from the US federal agency in 2021.