LG/Samsung prepares for the metaverse era, 'getting settled'... 1st and 2nd in patent holdings

LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics are counted as having the world's No. 1 and No. 2 competitiveness, respectively, in the next-generation metabus field, such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR).

On the 28th, Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) and market research firm Cyber Soken counted VR and AR-related patents filed in the US, Japan, and European markets since 2016, and it appeared like this.

LG Electronics ranked 11th in the number of patents related to the Metaverse from 2011 to 2015. In this survey, it rebounded 10 places and rose to first place. Samsung Electronics maintained second place during the same period. Third place was taken by Meta (formerly Facebook), which rose seven places during the same period. Fourth place was occupied by China's Huawei, which was outside the top 20.

Nikkei analyzed that Korean companies such as LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics show strengths in the display and semiconductor fields. As a result, it is explained that the growth trend in the field of sea depth devices is remarkable, not finished products such as VR terminals. In the case of Huawei, there were many patents related to video playback and image processing.

When companies with Metaverse patents are classified by country, the United States occupied the majority. A total of six US companies, including Meta, Microsoft, Apple, and Qualcomm, were among the top 10 metaverse-related patents. In addition, 57% of the total number of 7,760 patents owned by the top 20 companies were filed by US companies. South Korea ranked second with 19%. China (12%) and Japan (8%) followed.

The Nikkei emphasized, "The metabus terminal will be the next generation electronic communication device following the smartphone."

On the other hand, according to Statista, a global statistics agency, the size of the metabus market exploded nearly 10 times from $30.7 billion last year to $296.9 billion in 2024 (KRW 397.2522 trillion). expected to show growth.