Apple declines to join The Metaverse Standards Forum

Announced this week, The Metaverse Standards Forum is designed to “bring together leading standards organizations and companies for industry-wide cooperation on interoperability standards needed to build the open metaverse.” Several major tech companies are members of the Forum, but not Apple (at least, not yet).

According to a press release, “the Forum will explore where the lack of interoperability is holding back metaverse deployment and how the work of Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) defining and evolving needed standards may be coordinated and accelerated.” It’s open to any organization at no cost.

Founding members include 0xSenses, Academy Software Foundation, Adobe, Alibaba, Autodesk, Avataar, Blackshark.ai, CalConnect, Cesium, Daly Realism, Disguise, the Enosema Foundation, Epic Games, the Express Language Foundation, Huawei, IKEA, John Peddie Research, Khronos, Lamina1, Maxon, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAR Cloud, the Open Geospatial Consortium, Otoy, Perey Research and Consulting, Qualcomm Technologies, Ribose, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Spatial Web Foundation, Unity, VerseMaker, Wayfair, the Web3D Consortium, the World Wide Web Consortium, and the XR Association. 

When it comes to Apple and augmented reality, in an interview with China Daily USA, CEO Tim Cook said that he was excited about the opportunities in the space and hat we should “stay tuned” to see what Apple will offer.