Snap looks to take on rivals with new augmented reality glasses
For years, Snap has considered a future where people wear glasses to display and interact with images generated by computer without having to scroll their smartphones.
The technological company based in Santa Monica will soon see if its betting of several billion dollars on augmented reality glasses has paid off.
Snap said on Tuesday that he planned to publish in 2026 AR glasses that people could buy.
Last year, Snap launched the latest version of its AR glasses, but the gadget was only available for developers. The new AR glasses, called specifications, will be lighter and more advanced than what was shown in 2024, said SNAP.
The company behind the missing messaging application Snapchat has not revealed the price of glasses or exactly when they are sold.
The augmented reality consists in superimposing digital objects on the vision of a person on the physical world, allowing people to wear virtual dog ears on their faces and to take virtual pokémon. Snap says that his glasses will be useful to more ways, helping people translate signs, learn to play the battery, browse the recipes and access the AI.
“We are obsessed with the meeting of more human computers. And through AI’s progress, computers think and act more than ever like humans. The conference, which was held in Long Beach, focuses on technologies such as AR.
Snap bets that AR glasses will reshape the way people interact with technology, spending more than $ 3 billion and 11 years of AR glasses construction. The competition was fierce.
Snap’s announcement occurs while large technological companies, including Meta, Google and Apple, also work on glasses with AI -powered tools.
Ben Bajarin, Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Creative Strategies, a market research company in San Jose, said it was difficult for Snap to compete with large technological companies like Google, Meta and Openai which have many precious data that feeds their AI tools.
“It is not only the possibility of making ARs and displays. It is also this multimodal AI engine that is linked to cameras and you can interact with it,” he said.
Even if Snap rivals release glasses that do not display virtual images over the physical world, consumers will probably hesitate to spend more money on additional features.
“If they drop the price and become more fun, more fanciful, then they compete on a different vector from what Google and Openai and probably Meta will try to do,” he said.
While technological companies have published glasses in the past, convincing people to buy them was a difficult battle. The first versions of snap glasses, used to record videos, and smart glasses such as Google Glass Flopped, but technology has improved.
President Trump’s booming prices on country goods like China may also have an impact on the development of new gadgets or consumer appetite to buy new electronics.
However, technological companies have reported that they are not ready to abandon construction glasses. Meta and Ray-Ban sell intelligent glasses that allow people to capture photos and videos, listen to music and interact with an AI assistant. The social media giant has also unveiled more competent AR glasses, known as Orion, but they are not available for the public.
This year, Google presented a prototype of its glasses during its developer conference. Associated with a smartphone, people who release the glasses can find more information on a painting or a trip by asking his assistant AI, Gemini, a question aloud.
OPENAI, the manufacturer behind Chatgpt, has teamed up with Jony IVE – an old Apple executive who helped design the iPhone – to work on a new device powered by AI, but has not revealed what it is.
AR glasses also give another way to earn money outside of digital announcements. In April, Snap’s shares fell by more than 15% after the company retained its forecasts for the second quarter, which aroused concerns that economic uncertainty concerning Trump prices could encourage advertisers to withdraw expenses. Tuesday, Snap shares have decreased by more than 24% so far this year to $ 8.49 per share.
The company has increased its income while reducing its net losses. Snap first quarter turnover increased by 14%, compared to $ 1.19 billion in 2024 to $ 1.36 billion this year. The company’s net loss fell 54% to 140 million dollars.
SNAP has more than 900 million monthly active users and 460 million daily active users.
