The metaverse was super hot in 2020 and some said it was the future of the internet, but now it is all but written off as a pandemic era fad
SK Telecom will cease operating its ifland metaverse on 31 March next year. It was launched to much fanfare in 2020 and allowed users to engage in a community as avatars and in personal spaces. The operator will instead focus on AI. ifland was seen as a phenomenon that could be exported to other countries after huge early success.
In May 2022, Deutsche Telekom announced it would work with SK Telecom to bring ifland to Europe and other Asian operators were interested too.
This is widely interpreted as a shift away from web3 technologies, including the metaverse, to AI after the huge impetus created by OpenAI and ChatGPT. It remains to be seen if Apple’s approach, spatial computing, takes off. Launched in 2023, its expensive headset does not seem to have set the world on fire so far.
KT has already axed its Meta Lounge and Genieverse services, while LG Uplus has postponed the launch of its business metaverse MetaSlap, according to Business Korea. It also reports that among major domestic metaverse services, Naver’s Zepeto is one of the few still in operation.