Race to make smart glasses relevant heats up again with new tech from Meta and Snap

More than a decade ago, expensive intelligent glasses that allowed people to take photos, send SMS and browse the web generated a lot of buzz but also resistance.

People who wore Glass Google In 2014, fears that intelligent glasses, at a price of $ 1,500, secretly recorded people or made human interactions socially clumsy. Two years later, the company behind the missing messaging application Snapchat I tried to sell sunglasses equipped with a camera in automatic distributors, but the portable gadget has also failed.

Today, major technological companies – including Facebook Meta, Google and Snap’s parent company – run again to encourage more people to wear a computer on their face, in competition to build what they consider the next big computer platform.

Apple, the iPhone manufacturer and the Amazon electronic commerce giant would also have worked on high -tech glasses. And Chatgpt Maker Openai This year has teamed up with Jony IVE, an old Apple executive known to have designed the iPhone, to build new AI devices that “will completely reinvent what a computer means.”

The race to develop a portable technology which could become as omnipresent as smartphones intensifies as AI assistants integrate more and more in the daily life of people. The use of smart glasses, however, is still niche and can take several years to become more common, according to analysts.

“We are heading in the right direction. It seems that 2025, 2026, even 2027 will be the years of inflection in the growth trajectory for intelligent glasses, “said Jitesh Ubrani, research director of the International Data Company that covers clothes.

The adoption of intelligent glasses consumers increases. In the United States, around 17% of online adults indicate that they used smart glasses, compared to 4% in 2024, a survey published by Forrester this year.

“While Meta is one step ahead of AI glasses, the competition is preparing for the bit,” wrote Mike Proulx, vice-president and research director to Forrester in a blog On the glasses supplied by AI of Meta. Samsung, HTC and Apple should get out of smart glasses next year.

Snap, the technological company based in Santa Monica behind Snapchat, is also positioned as a competitor.

Snap plans to sell more powerful augmented reality glasses in 2026. The company announced this week that it had updated the operating system that feeds its AR glasses.

Augmented reality technology superimposes computer -generated images on the physical world and is used in games like Pokémon Go. It is also used for facial filters on applications like Snapchat where people wear digital dog ears or change hair color.

Meta, who already sells Ray-Ban intelligent glasses and virtual reality headsets, presented her latest smart glasses in Menlo Park, California on Wednesday evening.

The range: a pair of more advanced Ray-Ban meta-lunes from $ 379 with a longer battery life, an AI assistant and the ability to capture more lively videos; Oakley Meta Vanguard glasses from $ 499 designed for training sessions; And Meta-Ray-Ban display glasses with a high-tech bracelet from $ 799, allowing people to send SMS and perform other tasks using subtle hand gestures.

“Glasses are the only factor in shape where you can let an AI see what you see, hear what you hear, talk to you throughout the day,” said Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday evening at the Meta developer conference. “It is therefore not surprising that the glasses have taken off.”

During the event, Zuckerberg showed how to put on smart glasses to capture the video by walking and running at the same time. He showed how smart glasses, when associated with an intelligent bracelet, could be used to write and send text by subtly moving his fingers.

He played music and even tried to make a WhatsApp video call – although this live demo failed.

“We will debug later,” said Zuckerberg on stage after being able to answer the WhatsApp call using the bracelet and the glasses. “You know, you practice these things as 100 times and then, you know, you never know what will happen.”

Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is expressed during the Connect Developer conference of the company in Menlo Park, California.

(Nic COURY / Associated Press)

IDC, which provides market intelligence on consumer technology, estimates that Meta has represented around 60% of the global screen of smart glasses without screen, as well as augmented and virtual reality headsets, during the second quarter of 2025.

From the end of 2023 to the second quarter of 2025, Meta sent more than 3.5 million pairs of his Ray-Ban intelligent glasses. IDC plans that the smart glasses market without posting will reach 9.4 million in 2025, up 247.5% compared to 2024 and most will be motivated by Meta.

Chinese technological companies such as Xiaomi and Huawei also sell intelligent glasses, but their sales are still hanging out behind Meta, and they are not also known in the United States, according to IDC.

Many things have changed since technological companies have published smart glasses over ten years ago. Artificial intelligence has advanced, paving the way to the development of other types of equipment.

Smart glasses have become more affordable, now in hundreds of dollars instead of more than $ 1,000. And people are less embarrassed to be filmed in public because it already happens with smartphones.

Technological companies must still convince people that smart glasses offer enough value to spend hundreds of dollars. And consumers, accustomed to whipping their smartphones to record everything, may have to change their behavior.

“In some respects, we come back to more natural behavior,” said Ubrani. “Voice is a very natural user interface, as is hand gestures.”