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Journalism of Courage
When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg takes the stage at the Meta Connect event, the company’s annual developer conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, his entire pitch will focus on convincing you that smart glasses are set to replace the smartphone in your pocket. And for that, you won’t have to wait years: the future could be yours now. That’s a stark contrast to how Apple is positioning the iPhone 17 lineup, unveiled last week, which seems to be either getting slimmer or just adding more cameras.
Zuckerberg’s vision may seem unconvincing at first, but with smartphone sales plateauing, Meta sees an opportunity not just to experiment, but to aggressively pursue a device that could replace them. The uptake of its Ray-Ban smart glasses is a sign that, although still far from replacing smartphones, smart glasses could become part of consumers’ daily lives with the right features and price point. The question is: can Meta be the company to mainstream the adoption of smart glasses – and if so, when?
Smart glasses have been a bright spot in Meta’s bold bets for the future, despite missing on the smartphone boom and a failed attempt to reshape the internet with the Metaverse.
At its Q2 2025 earnings call at the end of July, Mark Zuckerberg didn’t hold back, saying: “If you don’t have glasses that have AI,” he warned, “you are probably going to be at a pretty significant cognitive disadvantage compared to other people.”
Meta and Ray-Ban first partnered on a pair of glasses in 2021, primarily designed for capturing photos and videos hands-free. However, Meta was far from the first to explore the idea of using glasses for tasks like snapping photos, making calls, and listening to music without reaching for your phone. Both Snap and Amazon have launched smart glasses that offer these capabilities. In fact, Google was one of the earliest entrants in the space with Google Glass in 2013, although that device was a commercial failure due to its high price, limited functionality, and short battery life.
But something unexpected happened that surprised even industry analysts and tech insiders. When Meta and Ray-Ban’s parent company, eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica, launched the second-generation smart glasses in October 2023, they became a surprise hit with consumers. Since their debut, more than 2 million units have been sold. Sales tripled in Q2 2025 alone, helping drive Meta’s 22 per cent year-over-year revenue growth. Zuckerberg has set a target to sell 5 million units by the end of the year.
Meta’s Ray-Ban AI glasses aren’t high-tech devices with full augmented reality capabilities. Instead, they are simple smart glasses that can perform useful tasks like identifying a food item a user is looking at in a grocery store or translating conversations between languages in real time.
For a company that has seen limited success in hardware in the past, Meta may have finally found its footing to pursue its grand ambitions, betting that smart glasses could drive the next major platform shift. The positive response to its Ray-Ban AI glasses suggests that consumers are indeed interested in smart eyewear, especially when it leans heavily on AI and offers genuinely useful features that go beyond what smartphones currently provide. That may be the case why Meta recently bought a 3% equity stake in EssilorLuxottica, which, in addition to Ray-Ban, also makes Oakley and Prada glasses, and many other iconic brands.
The Ray-Ban AI glasses may not have AR capabilities yet, but they are good enough to prove that the interface of the future might be on your face – not in your pocket. What sets them apart is that they don’t feel dystopian; they look and feel like regular, lightweight glasses people already wear. Combined with virtual assistants that can answer questions based on a user’s surroundings almost instantly, these features have made smart glasses far more practical. Maybe why this has helped Meta gain ground and target these glasses at everyday consumers.
The fast adoption of Ray-Ban AI glasses, even if limited to certain demographics, shows that there is an appetite for smart glasses, and more importantly, a real opportunity to create a third product category beyond smartphones and smartwatches. However, Meta’s ambitions don’t stop with the Ray-Ban AI glasses. At its Connect conference this week, the company may be closer to launching new smart glasses that include a built-in display for viewing apps and notifications reportedly costing $800, the same price as the new baseline iPhone 17, as well as a wristband for easier gesture control. Last year, Meta showcased a prototype of its Orion augmented reality glasses.
The current Ray-Ban Meta glasses don’t display anything on the lenses, meaning users can only listen to audio and receive feedback through sound. However, with Google recently showcasing a pair of glasses that feature a display for visual information alongside verbal responses, Meta will need to respond with a competitive challenger and soon.
The race to make smart glasses mainstream is still on, though many industry insiders believe Meta has already taken the lead. That may be true, especially considering that Apple, Google, and Amazon have yet to make a strong showing. With a billion-dollar partnership in the world’s largest eyewear maker, which boasts a massive retail footprint, and Meta controlling the software and AI, the company holds a clear competitive advantage. However, Meta still doesn’t own the complete tech stack. It doesn’t develop the chips used in its smart glasses, nor does it have the infrastructure that Apple possesses. And while truly augmented reality (AR) glasses that can replace smartphones are still years away, what Meta’s Ray-Ban AI glasses have already done is create a new product category, one that competitors are now targeting, often at even lower price points.
At the same time, with Apple AirPods and other wireless earbuds gaining AI features, though they belong to a different product category, they are contributing to the growing popularity of smart glasses. The real question now is: how quickly can Meta innovate in the smart glasses segment and continue adding software features that complement the experience? Doing so could accelerate the development of an ecosystem, something Meta wants to take the lead on, including new types of apps and an app store specifically designed for smart glasses.
And while smart glasses may not yet be a major revenue driver, they have the potential to lay the foundation for a future where Meta no longer depends on Apple or Google to distribute its apps. But to get there, Meta needs to move fast – to take control of the user experience before anyone else does.
