Consumer Tech Opportunities and Challenges in the Metaverse

The Metaverse is a virtual-shared space surrounding the entirety of virtual and augmented reality experiences, providing a persistent and immersive environment, where users can interact with each other and consumer tech devices in real time. Consumer technologies emerge as essential not only for success, but also for the widespread adoption of the broadly recognized scope of the Metaverse, as discussed in the current issue of MCE. Crucial aspects, such as accessibility, device ergonomics, and ease of use, play a pivotal role in facilitating users' seamless immersion into digital environments. Besides, this issue also aims to foster the dissemination of challenges in networking, security, and user experience, which are imperative for enabling smooth interactions among millions of users within the shared Metaverse space. In addition, it is my pleasure to provide practitioners and researchers with high-quality, state-of-the-art articles dedicated to consumer technology solutions for emerging issues related to data privacy, authentication, ethics, social aspects, sustainability, and different applications in the context of Metaverse.