Having signaled earlier this year its intention to expand its metaverse research and development activities, Japanese operator NTT Docomo has formed a wholly owned unit called NTT Qonoq which, with a reported budget of 60 billion yen (US$412 million), will develop hardware and software products for the extended reality (XR) sector.

Docomo CEO Motoyuki Ii told the Nikkei Asia Newspaper at the beginning of this year that the carrier would ramp up its metaverse efforts before the end of the year, building on work already started on XR World, its consumer metaverse platform.

Now, Qonoq was formed to explore business and consumer use cases. It has been in operation since October 1 and has about 200 employees focused on developing hardware and software products and providing customers…