Apple CEO Tim Cook believes the metaverse has a lot of potential

Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that the metaverse has "a lot of potential" and that the company is investing in it. Cook was speaking at the company's first-quarter earnings call in 2022.

When asked about the metaverse, Cook responded, according to AppleInsider, "we're a company in the business of innovation and we have over 14,000 AR apps in the App Store". It's worth noting that Cook never mentioned the term "metaverse" in his response. Cook also mentioned that Apple had upped its research and development spending. "There's quite a bit of investment going into things that aren't on the market at this point," Cook noted to investors and analysts.

For the uninitiated, the metaverse is envisioned as a new world order in which your skills could be given digitally in exchange for other virtual assets, such as Cryptocurrencies. To put it another way, your existence will be far more deeply and intricately intertwined with the digital world. On one level, it sounds dystopic, and most examples of the virtual and physical worlds merging in popular fiction live up to that idea.

Cook mentioned the widespread use of Apple's ARKit foundation among iOS apps, implying that Apple has been pushing for mainstream AR experiences. Since the inclusion of LiDAR to the iPad Pro and iPhone 12 Pro, Apple has been pushing towards mainstream AR experiences.

In the meantime, Apple is reported to be working on a virtual reality headset that might be released in 2022. People would be able to engage with the metaverse using this headset.

Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that he is a crypto investor and holds digital currency in November 2020. Cook was responding to Andrew Ross Sorkin, who was organising a two-day online summit for the New York Times. The Apple CEO expressed his thoughts on cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which are a popular issue right now. Cook, on the other hand, ruled out the possibility of Apple Pay adopting cryptocurrency in the near future. Apple is "looking at" cryptocurrency, he said, but has no plans to integrate it into Apple Pay.