The smart glasses market has been growing rapidly in the last couple of years, mostly led by the second generation of Meta Ray-Ban glasses that have come onto the market and taken consumers by storm. Interestingly, the first generation of Meta’s smart glasses, the Ray-Ban Stories released in 2021, fizzled not really capturing the consumers’ interest and underwhelming in terms of sales. In comparison, the second generation did more than 900k sales in just the fourth quarter of 2024, and holds over 65% global market share. We have also seen devices from major brands like Google with Google Glass and Bose with Bose Frames, which have failed to take hold and have both been discontinued. So why the current growth?
The Tech Behind the Specs
Well, part of the answer is clearly improving technology, this means the glasses can be relatively light whilst cramming in more features. Meta Ray-Bans second-generation Wayfarers weigh around 50 grams, which is only 5 grams heavier than the 45-gram non-smart Ray-Ban Wayfarers. At the same time, the glasses manage to pack in a 12-megapixel ultrawide camera, open-ear speakers on each arm of the glasses, five microphones, 32 GB of internal storage, the ability to connect via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and batteries capable of powering the glasses for up to 4 hours of use. Not too bad for an additional 5 grams. This impressive bundle of features rolled up in such a small and unobtrusive form factor means that consumers are now viewing smart glasses as a legitimate technology product with significant real world use cases.
The last couple of years have also seen rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence, which, when integrated into smart glasses, gives them far more functionality than just a pair of bulky glasses that have a camera and speakers bolted to them. These new AI features let users access information and interact with the world in real time, for example using the built-in cameras first person viewpoint to seamlessly identify landmarks by asking “What’s that building in front of me?”. Or allowing the user to spontaneously ask questions, just as they would with a search engine on a smartphone, but without the hassle of getting the phone out of their pocket and typing out the question, then trolling through results. This elevates the glasses from a nice-to-have gimmick into a useful tool for everyday life. There is clearly still a long way to go though; the AI features are still relatively primitive, and it’s doubtful that most people will be eager to randomly start asking AI questions out loud in public, given people’s desire for privacy.
There are also interesting technological developments in the use of smart glasses as discreet hearing aids, with many people suffering from partial hearing loss being reticent to wear traditional hearing aids, due to the attached stigma and the implied acceptance of one’s age. This is a sizable and growing market with The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimating roughly 20% of the worlds population has some degree of hearing loss, this translates to over 1.5 Billion people. EssilorLuxottica has recently released it’s Nuance Audio smart glasses that have built-in microphones that pick up sounds the glasses are pointed at and then amplify them through built in speakers in the arms of the glasses. The idea being a partially deaf individual wearing the glasses in a somewhat noisy environment, like that found in a popular bar on a Friday night, can more easily hear a person they are trying to hold a conversation with. Transcribeglass has taken a slightly different approach to the same problem. Their smart glasses also use microphones to pick up conversations in the glasses field of view, but then the conversations are transcribed in writing onto the glass in front of the wearers eye. Allowing the hearing impaired individual to read conversations like subtitles in a film. Transcribe’s glasses can also be used to translate foreign languages in real time, giving them an even broader market appeal. Both companies approaches are interesting and highlight a huge opportunity in the market for a discreet solution to help individuals with hearing loss and foreign language translation, which could create a significant tail wing for smart glasses sales.
Going Hands Free
We have also seen additional use cases being added, like video streaming—especially with Meta making their glasses easily compatible with their social media platforms, allowing things like live-streaming Instagram Reels from the glasses. Smart glasses have the advantage that they can record first-person videos whilst allowing the person recording to remain in the moment. This was one of the key talking points from Apple when they launched their Vision Pro, but the bulky screen in front of people’s faces, coupled with the slightly off-putting projection of their eyes, means that “in the moment” is a relative term. Thinner, more normal-looking smart glasses from the likes of Meta allow the wearer to be as in the moment as any other glasses wearer. This will allow people to experience key events like birthday parties or watching New Year’s Eve celebrations and then still have the videos to last a lifetime, or more likely, post on their social media. There are obviously still problems with this technology, like restricted memory storage capacity and the quality of the videos recorded, but these have been rapidly improving in recent years and will likely continue to do so.
Meta Dominates, But Rivals Are Emerging
Right now, the smart glasses segment is a small one that is dominated by Meta, with the next biggest competitor being Chinese technology company Huawei, Meta owning 66% and Huawei 6% in 2024. But seeing the success of the smart glasses market, other competitors are circling. As mentioned previously, EssilorLuxottica, the owner of the brand Ray-Ban and the company with a virtual monopoly on the standard glasses market, has recently launched the Nuance Audio smart glasses. Amazon is also a significant player with its line of Echo Frame smart glasses doing hundreds of thousands of sales in recent years. More niche players like Transcribeglass, Xreal and Gentle Monster are also sprouting up to embrace the opportunity. Additionally, it has long been understood that much of the development of Apple’s Vision Pro and Samsung’s Project Moohan, both virtual reality goggles, has been aimed at laying the R&D groundwork for competing in the future mass-market virtual and augmented reality products. Apparently even Apple understands a first-generation augmented reality device priced at $3,500 is unlikely to have broad market appeal. The increasing focus on smart glasses is clearly demonstrated by Samsung’s recent show casing of its own prototype smart glasses, and the launching of Android XR, an operating system designed out of a collaboration between Google, Samsung and Qualcomm, to work on Smart glasses and Augmented/Virtual Reality goggles.
Can Smart Glasses replace the Mobile Phone?
In many ways, the form factor of a device that can project in front of the eyes is more useful and intuitive than a technological brick you keep in your pocket. This is because the world becomes your screen, you can project tabs and information in every part of your field of vision, should you choose, or simply wear them like a normal pair of clear glasses. This gets around the fact that your phone, though increasingly powerful, has a relatively limited screen size, which can make doing things like watching films and writing out emails annoying. Whereas with a larger field of view, you can watch films as if they were projected on the side of massive buildings or possibly even have 3D interactions within films and games, with the visuals being projected all around you. Both Apple and Meta have shown off hand-tracking technology with the Apple Vision Pro being able to do this through a series of cameras on the headset tracking your hand movements, and the Meta Orion concept glasses getting a similar effect by having the user wear a gesture-tracking wrist strap. This hand-tracking technology allows for the possibility of normal, intuitive interactions with technology through hand gestures. This could be as simple as projecting a virtual keyboard in your field of view and then tracking your hand movements to ascertain what key you are typing, or it could mean interactive gameplay. For example you could play a virtual game of tennis with the glasses tracking and interpreting your wild tennis swings, and seamlessly turning them into a coherent game of tennis against an AI or another player wearing smart glasses half a world away.
The holy grail for smart glasses will be an augmented reality screen that can seamlessly overlay projections onto the real world. Of course this can be done with larger devices like Apple’s Vision Pro and the Meta Quest, but to be able to do this in the slimmed-down format of a normal-ish looking pair of glasses that regular people would consider wearing on a daily basis would be a massive step forward. This, coupled with a significantly improved AI interface, larger battery life, and a slimmed-down sleeker design, could allow these glasses to go from a niche but interesting product type to a product with broad mass-market appeal. If the technology can be improved enough, there is a possibility that in a number of years smart glasses could start taking market share from mobile phones, as they should be able to replicate the majority of the phones features but in a more intuitive form factor.
Conclusion & Forecast
Smart glasses are a rapidly growing market as technological advances are beginning to make the form factor viable. Further advances in technology, greater consumer awareness, and new entrants into the market will likely continue this growth into the long run (IDC is currently forecasting 18.7 million units in 2029 compared to 2.7 million units in our most recent full year of data 2024). A little way off the 1.44 billion mobile phones sold worldwide in 2024, but if there is any product positioned to eventually replace the smartphone, both industry analysts and technology giants are betting it will be smart glasses.