News Briefing 

　　Cristiano Amon, CEO of Qualcomm which is an American mobile chip maker, said in an exclusive interview a few days ago that Metaverse is real and will turn into an enormously huge business opportunity, which could potentially be as colossal as that of the mobile phone. Qualcomm should continue to tie up in partnership with Meta or Microsoft and other giant players, helping to supply both hardware and software of XR (extended reality).

Impact Analysis 

　　Even though the Reality Labs of Meta, which is responsible for the Metaverse business, suffered a loss of more than US$10 billion in 2021 and a loss of $2.96 billion in the first quarter of 2022, creating doubt in the market about the future development of the Metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, indicated the operating cost rendered now is to be used for laying down the foundation for promoting related technologies. At the start of this May, Meta had joined forces with the Institute of Information Industry (III) to set up the first Metaverse XR Hub in Taiwan. Aside from facilitating the establishment of the Metaverse in Taiwan, the gesture also announced its determination for such development. XR (extended reality) also known as eXtended Reality is a collection of all VR (virtual reality)/AR (augmented reality)/MR (mixed reality) technologies, only the current way for consumers to log into Metaverse is mainly via VR/RR application.

　　In addition to providing platform and content, the development of Metaverse also relies on hardware equipment and environmental infrastructure. To enhance the user’s sense of immersion and interaction in a virtual world, the combination of high-performance computing (HPC) chips and various sensors can be used to create real-time and realistic virtual interactions. As for the ABF substrate used in HPC chip packaging, a larger quantity of ABF substrate will be required to place chips and components as the trend of 3D chipset packaging and heterogeneous integration in the future is increasing the amount of ABF substrate used. Thin, flexible, and skin-friendly soft boards should enable greater development possibilities for sensors in wearable devices. Alongside the gradual improvement of high-frequency flexible board materials such as LPI and fluorine series, the flexible board can also be used for the transmission of high-frequency signals. In the coming days, it will be possible to create a communication environment of full coverage as it works with 5G, 6G, and even low-orbit, and further deal with the problem of signal interference and delay, helping to build up the development foundation for Metaverse. As for PCB products used in infrastructure as 5G base stations or satellite receiving stations, they are mostly thick and large boards and exert stricter requirements in terms of loss and stability for signal transmission. Hence, attention should not just be rendered to high-frequency and high-speed substrate materials or high-speed copper foil and other related applications, it is also important that consideration of the compatibility of the heterogeneous materials used should be offered. Based on the aforementioned elaboration, it is critical that the Metaverse system has to rely on the coordination and cooperation of terminal products from various fields for its establishment before it can become sound and well-developed. As for these products, they have encompassed most of the main PCB products from Taiwan as well as the upstream supply chain. As viewed, huge business opportunities created behind it are of the most noteworthy technological trends that Taiwanese businessmen should well follow.