On September 30, Meta started selling its first artificial intelligence glasses with built-in display, a futuristic device that attracted crowds outside its Burlingame, California, store as people lined up to try on the USD 799 product.
The enthusiasm was somewhat of a surprise given the fumbled live demo at Meta Connect on September 17, where CEO Mark Zuckerberg tried multiple times to pick up a WhatsApp video call from his CTO Andrew Bosworth.
As the name Meta Ray-Ban Display suggests, the smart glasses feature a small transparent display that shows users information such as text messages and map directions, while a wristband responds to slight hand movements to compose a text message or pick up a call. Users can also interact by voice with the embedded Meta AI assistant.
But when Nikkei Asia tried the glasses on, it would be an understatement to say it’s tricky to use the neural wristband to control them. It took at least three tries to open the camera or maps.
Meta’s first AI glasses with display have piqued the interest of tech enthusiasts from around the globe. One visitor from the Netherlands asked his Uber driver to accompany him into the Meta store in Burlingame so he could bring an extra pair home as a gift since the store allows each person to purchase only one pair on the first day of the launch.
Despite Zuckerberg’s lackluster live demo, the glasses mark a new era, not only for the company, but for the broader AI sector. The form factor could be the “next smartphone” and bring the sci-fi promise of an all-capable personal AI agent closer, according to analysts and industry executives.
AI on smartphones has yet to light the world on fire. Apple’s first AI smartphone, the iPhone 16, did not live up to expectations and the company downplayed AI as a selling point for this year’s iPhone 17 lineup.
Nearly all other smartphone makers have been advertising their AI assistants on their latest devices, yet none has convinced consumers that there is a powerful personal AI agent living in their phone that they can easily delegate tasks to or communicate with.
But a sleek device that users can wear all day could be a game changer by serving as a more natural platform for users to interact with such AI assistants.
“AI glasses offer a more natural interface for personal AI agents, enabling continuous, hands-free, and contextual computing—seeing what users see and hearing what they hear,” said Flora Tang, senior analyst at Counterpoint Research.
“This supports real-time translation, object recognition and proactive assistance in ways that smartphones, still reliant on touch or voice activation, struggle to match.”
This may be why big tech players in the US and China are betting on such a niche product that has only shipped a couple of million units globally as the next must-win battle in the AI era.
Research firm Omdia estimates that global AI glasses shipments will reach 5.1 million units in 2025, up 158% year-on-year, but still dwarfed by the over one billion smartphones sold annually.
According to Counterpoint, Meta accounted for 70% of all smart glasses shipped in the first half of this year and has sold over three million pairs of its Ray-Ban AI glasses since their launch in September 2023, but still only a small fraction of the iPhones Apple ships every quarter.
Nevertheless, Apple is also reportedly working on its own AI glasses. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has hired Apple’s former chief design officer to develop AI hardware devices including glasses, according to The Information.
Google, meanwhile, is working with Samsung to develop AI glasses that feature AI agents powered by Gemini models and designs by eyewear brands Gentle Monster and Warby Parker, Nikkei Asia previously reported.
Across the Pacific, Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent are working on similar AI glasses that will soon launch in China.
One reason for the interest in these wearable devices is their potential to be the next frontier of the “software and hardware” ecosystems that are seen as critical for winning the AI race.
“AI glasses are expected to become an increasingly important smart wearable accessory, supporting tech companies’ multi-device strategies and helping users reduce their reliance on smartphones,” said Tang at Counterpoint.
Rokid, a smartglasses developer that has beaten Chinese tech giants to launch the first AI glasses with display in the country, said it has sold over 300,000 such glasses this year.
“We had a lot of the support from the government as well as they recognize this is such an important part of the national tech strategy,” said Liang Guan, Rokid’s US general manager, adding that the company’s AI glasses were chosen as the state gift to officials attending the China-ASEAN Expo held in Guangxi this month.
AI functions of Rokid glasses are enabled by Alibaba’s Qwen models. Despite the e-commerce giant planning to launch its own Quark AI glasses by the end of 2025, Guan said Rokid is not a competitor to Alibaba, but an important partner that will bring more users into the company’s massive software ecosystem, which ranges from payment apps to maps.
“They want their [AI] models to be adopted by more people so more people will join their ecosystem,” Guan said.
And getting users enmeshed in “sticky” ecosystems is perhaps more important to big tech companies like Alibaba than selling a few more pairs of glasses.
Indeed, the frontrunners in smartglasses in the US and China are also leaders in the global AI race. Companies with their own large language models, such as Google with Gemini and Meta with Llama, have a leg up given how critical the AI agent in such devices is for user experience, according to Bob O’Donnell, president and chief analyst at Technalysis Research.
“It’s another reason why Apple needs to get their act together in terms of AI models, because people are going to want to interact with those devices in that way. They don’t want to have to touch their phones. They just want to talk,” he added.
As the AI glasses race heats up, US and China players will eventually come head to head in the global market. How good their fundamental AI models are could be the deciding factor in who emerges on top.
Chinese players have a number of advantages on their side. The tech supply chain in their country may help domestic smart-glasses makers to beat their competitors in cost and efficiency, similar to how smartphone makers like Huawei, Xiaomi, and Oppo are quickly catching up to Apple in terms of global market share.
“Chinese players benefit from a massive domestic user base and superapp ecosystems, such as WeChat and Douyin, that drive everyday use cases, along with a strong hardware supply chain and cost efficiency, giving them an edge in rapid iteration and competitive pricing,” Tang said.
Meanwhile, US tech giants “have greater financial resources to invest in AI and software R&D, excel in hardware-software integration, and enjoy globally recognized consumer brands,” Tang added.
While DeepSeek and other models in China are rapidly reaching parity with US rivals in performance, Chinese makers of AI glasses can not win over the global market “without good English language models, and that’s going to be the stopping point for the Chinese OEMs (original equipment manufacturers),” said O’Donnell at Technalysis.
Guan at Rokid disagrees.
The company is planning to launch its first AI glasses in the US in November with a price tag of USD 599. This global version will be supported by both Alibaba and GPT models.
“Users can choose which AI models they want to use, it’s not an issue,” Guan said.
Despite the potential AI glasses hold, analysts and industry participants said wearable devices are unlikely to replace smartphones in the foreseeable future, given constraints in computing power and on-device AI processing, as well as challenges in heat dissipation and battery life, all while needing to keep the product lightweight and compact.
“Everyone wants a JARVIS, the all-mighty AI assistant to Iron Man, but there is only so much a pair of glasses can do now given how limited the space we can work with [is],” Guan said.
As Meta’s botched live demo showed, it could be years before AI glasses and similar products become as mature a product as smartphones are today and adopted by the masses.
“It’s getting interesting, but it’s still not there yet,” O’Donnell said.
This article first appeared on Nikkei Asia. It has been republished here as part of 36Kr’s ongoing partnership with Nikkei.