Why ‘Open Platform’ Is the Next Big Frontier for Smart Glasses

This morning, new smart glasses company Even Realities launched Even Hub, an open app store and development platform for its G2 line of display-style smart glasses. This could be the opening salvo in a war between open and closed platform display smart glasses.

On one side is Meta. The Goliath of the smart glasses market has so far taken a completely closed approach to its new Display Glasses: Meta decides what your smart glasses can do and determines which apps you can access. David’s Goliath in Meta is Even Realities, a boutique tech company that just launched a storefront with more than 50 apps created by third-party developers, so users can decide for themselves what to install and what to ignore.

While the market for AR-style smart glasses with displays is currently limited to tech specialists and early adopters, if HUD-style glasses catch on (and both companies maintain their current strategies), the winner could determine how much control users will have over their augmented future.

Competing Strategies for Display-Like Smart Glasses

In terms of total market share, Meta and Even Realities are not in the same universe. Meta’s market cap is about $1.47 trillion, and its line of Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses accounts for about 82% of the smart glasses market. Even Realities is worth about $10 million, and its annual revenue of $3.3 million represents less than 1% of the total smart glasses market. But in the in-display glasses niche, the two companies are comparable: estimates for 2025-2026 suggest that Meta has sold around 20,000 of its high-end Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, while Even Realities’ earnings suggest that the company has sold between 10,000 and 25,000 pairs of its G2 glasses.

The two companies take very different approaches to selling “glasses with HUD.” Meta’s Display Glasses are priced at $799 and are designed to do everything their popular screenless glasses do, with the addition of high-quality color video and a distinctive Ray-Ban look. Even Realities’ $599 G2 glasses don’t have an onboard camera or audio, and the monochrome screen is housed in a very discreet frame that no one will suspect is anything other than a pair of “normal” specs. They are designed to be fashionable, functional, everyday glasses that can also project a map in front of your eyes or help you counter bartenders when you need to. Here’s a review of the latest generation of Even Realities glasses for more information.

The biggest gap between these companies may turn out to be their approach to software. All technology sits on a continuum between “open” and “closed,” and Meta’s smart glasses have so far fallen far into the narrow end of the spectrum. You get a highly curated experience, with Meta acting as the arbiter of what’s installed on your face computer, whether you wear Display Glasses or Ray-Ban Metas. You don’t download apps, you turn “experiences” on and off. You can choose to disable or enable Apple Music, but you cannot choose to listen to music on a new platform developed by a third party. You can’t remove core features you don’t want. Even something as basic as changing the AI’s wake words is prohibited; it’s “Hey, Meta”, or it’s nothing.

The Even Realities approach is semi-open, like the Apple App Store. It’s not Linux’s “anything goes” approach, but you can browse Even Realities’ library of approved apps and choose whether or not you need an in-glasses EPUB reader, a chess set, or a charging meter for your Tesla. Even Realities also lets you remove even essential features you don’t use on its glasses.

It should be noted that Meta is not fundamentally opposed to third-party development. The company’s Meta Horizon store for the Quest line of VR headsets is a massive, vibrant marketplace offering everything from high-end games to tiny, crazy tools, and the company has closed much of its first part VR development, while committing to continuing to support independent developers. So it’s possible/likely that Meta is waiting for the hardware to mature before opening a more open store for its glasses, or simply adding a “Display” section to the existing Horizon Store.

Open is not necessarily better

While the knee-jerk reaction might be to conclude that the choice offered by an open system is more desirable than a closed system, this has not always been the case in the world of technology. Nintendo dominated video gaming in the 1980s by maintaining strict quality controls on games released on its NES, and few kids wanted the more “open” competing systems. Adobe’s Flash dominated everything the “open web” had to offer in the early 2000s, only dying when another relatively closed system, Apple’s iPhone, refused to support it. Speaking of Apple, its iOS devices account for 63% of the U.S. smartphone market, while its closest competitor, the more open Android, is perpetually second. Time, as they say, will tell whether consumers prefer a curated experience, a modular and open experience, or even if they want glasses with a HUD.