Apple and Google eye the future of AI glasses

Apple and Google know that smart glasses will replace the smartphone as the main device people use the most, according to recent news. And the two leading smartphone platform makers don’t want Meta to own the future of mobile computing, but they know Meta is leading the race so far. 

Meta is the current and surprising leader in AI glasses that don’t show a screen to the user.

The best rough estimates are that Meta has shipped 2 million Ray-Ban Meta glasses and earned $600 million in revenue. This is small potatoes compared to smartphone sales, but far ahead of any other player in the market. 

Competitors fear that Meta will expand its lead in non-visual AI glasses like Ray-Ban Meta glasses and then leverage that lead into AR glasses. 

Meta is reportedly working on a few smart glasses with displays integrated into the lenses. One, code-named “Hypernova,” is expected to be an advanced version of the current Ray-Ban Meta glasses, featuring a screen in the right lens, specifically in the lower-right quadrant. This display will show a home screen similar to the Meta Quest interface, allowing for apps and notifications. These glasses could cost between $1,000 and $1,400 and could launch in the latter half of 2025. They’re expected to include an upgraded camera and will almost certainly offer voice and multimodal access to Meta’s AI assistant. 

In addition to voice commands, users might be able to control the glasses via capacitive touch sensors on the sides and a “neural wristband” for hand gestures. A second-generation model, code-named “Hypernova 2” is planned for release around 2027, with displays in both lenses. Meta is also developing Oakley-branded smart glasses designed for athletic use, which might include a display. 

According to Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman, Apple CEO Tim Cook is “hell bent” on launching true augmented reality glasses before Meta can get there. 

Gurman’s reporting suggests that Cook has made the clobbering of Meta in this market his top priority, spending most of his time on it and seeing it as the company’s future. In other words, Cook has an obsession today with AR that his predecessor, Steve Jobs, had with the iPad in the early 2000s.

Apple’s vision is clear: lightweight, all-day wearable glasses that overlay digital information onto the real world. This product could one day replace the iPhone as the company’s flagship device. 

Unfortunately, Apple is still years away from delivering such a product. Several key technologies —l ike ultra-high-resolution displays, powerful-yet-efficient chips, and tiny batteries that last all day — are simply not yet ready. 

Apple is also working on two new versions of its pricey Vision Pro headset, a kind of stop-gap product to attract users and developers while Apple makes the real AR product. 

Meanwhile, Google has re-entered the conversation around AR glasses in a big way. At TED2025 in Vancouver last week, Google’s head of Android XR, Shahram Izadi, took the stage wearing a prototype of the company’s new AI-powered AR glasses. The demo was impressive: the glasses translated spoken Farsi into English in real-time, scanned a book cover for contextual information, and even helped the wearer find a lost hotel key card using a “memory” feature powered by Gemini, Google’s latest AI assistant. 

Unlike the original Google Glass, these new glasses look like regular eyewear, with a lightweight frame and a small, embedded display. All the heavy processing is offloaded to a connected smartphone, which keeps the glasses comfortable and stylish. 

Google’s approach is to make the glasses a natural extension of the phone, streaming data back and forth and giving users access to Android apps and Google services without ever looking down at a screen. 

According to reports from TED2025 and The Korea Economic Daily, these glasses are being developed in partnership with Samsung. Samsung will handle manufacturing and marketing, and a full release is planned for 2026.

If you take the projections at face value (which you shouldn’t), Meta will be first, and Apple will be last in getting to market with AR glasses that can be worn all day in public. 

The hard reality is that Meta, Google, and Apple all face the same technical barriers that have slowed progress for years. 

According to Bloomberg, Apple’s engineers are still struggling to shrink high-resolution displays and batteries down to a size and weight that people would actually want to wear all day, while also making the glasses powerful enough to run advanced AI and AR features. 

Because of these technical barriers, the device many Silicon Valley insiders say will replace the smartphone will depend entirely on smartphones to function for the foreseeable future. 

Building glasses that are light, stylish, and comfortable enough to wear all day, while also packing in high-res displays, cameras, microphones, speakers, and a battery that lasts, is a massive engineering challenge. 

At least for the next few years, such glasses can be affordable or powerful and appealing to wear, but they can’t be both. 

Still, the recent flurry of news, demos, and leaks show that the industry is more serious than ever about making AR glasses a reality. Apple is pouring billions into R&D, Google is betting on AI and partnerships, and Samsung is gearing up for a major hardware launch.

The next few years will be critical, but the nirvana of slipping on a pair of glasses and seeing the digital world blend seamlessly with the real one remains, as always, just out of sight.