Killer Applications of the 3D Web!

This is my second possibility to publish a few impressions and insights from my research project about the 3D web on this Blog. As announced in the last post, I had the pleasure to speak with 45 industry leaders with various backgrounds: Venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and people from R&D. I've been confronted with controversial opinions during my research, however, some important trends in terms of 3D web applications I could identify from my point of view.

One major field of potential killer applications in the 3D web in the next five years could be the entertainment consumer space. Since online gaming is a huge market now, most interviewed people believe in the continuation of this trend. Furthermore, virtual worlds will still struggle with a further mass consumer adoption while the distinction between virtual worlds and online gaming will actually get blurred, however. Social networks will continue to provide a platform with a big potential for further applications being built on, including 3D web applications. On the other side, most interviewed people rather doubt on the future of 3D avatar shopping in virtual worlds. Finally, as soon as those applications will get further adoption, a market for virtual goods - a secondary market - is getting more and more interesting.

The graph below is aimed to visualise the mentioned trends in terms of potential 3D web applications in the next five years. It shows a cutting of a bigger graph I am currently working on and shows therefore only the entertainment consumer space. A bigger picture of those applications I will try to show in my final summary, in which for instance navigation or corporate virtual worlds will be included. I look forward to show next time which potential key players could play a significant role in the 3D web during the next few years.

The dimensions of the bubbles indicate the current (left figure) and the anticipated future (middle) market sizes of each category. These two depicted regions refer to the green quarter of the whole skeletal graph shown on the right.

Cheers, Daniel