Meta Has Already Won the Smart Glasses Race

There is a reason why the first successful intelligent specifications seem to be in the 1950s. This additional thickness is not only a retro flair, it hides a processor and a battery. But this technical constraint creates a creative opportunity: in the right frame, intelligent technology can disappear. And transforming medical quality glasses – like prescription glasses – in elegant fashion accessories and general public is exactly what Essilorluxotica does the best.

However, mixing smart technology with haute couture is not without risk. Do these two worlds really want to share a nose bridge? “Meta and Essilorluxottica hope that this collaboration will be one of the first successful attempts to integrate high-tech applications, such as AI, in luxury products”, explains Quillin, “although the Ray-Ban partnership seems successful so far, it is not clear if consumers will adopt integrated technological functionalities into high-end products like Prada, Chanel or Versace.”

Meta, for her part, bets on convergence. The company sees a future where fashion and technology are inseparable. In a note entitled “Personal superintendent”, Zuckerberg has imagined a future where “personal devices like glasses that understand our context – because they can see what we see, hear what we hear and interact with us throughout the day – will become our main computer devices.” This vision of the glasses integrated into AI shows how much Meta believes that the future will be both portable and always.

We could see the first overview of the portable future of Zuckerberg in September. Bloomberg reports that it is at this time that Meta will reveal her latest smart glasses, with a head -up display, which will fall supposedly later this fall with a starting price of around $ 800.

The competitive firewall

However, although Meta may have taken the first credible swing on intelligent consumption specifications, she is hardly alone. Google discreetly restarted its portable ambitions after the so triggered disappearance of Google Glass, acquiring the intelligent glass start-up in 2020, and would have worked with manufacturers like Samsung and Qualcomm to develop an XR ecosystem (extended reality).

Then, in July, Google doubled with an investment of $ 100 million in Gentle Monster, the brand of South Korean glasses known for its avant-garde creations and ready for technology. Together, they develop a pair of new generation intelligent glasses that will merge AI’s capacities with a high -end aesthetic – without cyborg, no more parade.

Apple, faithful to the form, tries to play at the long game. The pro vision has never been supposed to live on your face full time, but it is a springboard. By first choosing to tackle the much more delicate problem of fully immersive virtual reality, Apple actually bet on the wrong horse – to make efforts in a technology that is dazzled, but has not won the average consumer.

Meta, on the other hand, marked out a bridgehead with simpler AR glasses that looked like something that people could really wear in public. Now, Bloomberg’s reports and information suggest that Apple is working on lighter and more portable AR glasses, although they can be years after the release. When they arrive, Apple will have the advantage of polished software and its own retail footprint, while Meta is being races to secure the same distribution advantage via Essilorluxottica.

Snap Evan Spiegel CEO, meanwhile, has long bet on AR. Snap has invested more than $ 3 billion in the past 11 years to build its own AR platform. Meta, on the other hand, spends more than that every quarter Thanks to its division of reality laboratories, which focuses on the RA and the VR, but also, Snap’s persistence highlights the duration of the track for this market.