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This morning, the upstart smart glasses company But the realities launched But the hubAn open app store and developer platform for it The G2 line of display style smart glasses. This could be the first salvo in the battle between open- and closed-platform display smart glasses.
One side is meta. The goliath of the smart glasses market has so far taken a completely closed approach to it New display glasses: Meta determines what your smart glasses can do and what apps you can access. The David to Meta’s Goliath 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 heads and early adopters, if HUD-style glasses continue (and both companies maintain their current strategies) the winner may decide how much control users will have over their augmented futures.
Competitive strategies for display-style smart glasses
In terms of total market share, Meta and Even Reality are not in the same universe. Meta has a market capitalization of approximately $1.47 trillion, and its Ray-Ban and Oakley smart eyewear lines are worth approx. 82% of the smart glasses market. Realities are also approximate $10 million And its $3.3 million in annual revenue is less than one percent of the total smart glasses market. But in the field of display-integrated glasses, the two companies are allies: projections for 2025-2026 indicate that the Meta is almost sold out. 20,000 for its high-end, Meta Ray-Ban display glassesWhile Even Realities’ profits indicate that the company has moved between 10,000 and 25,000 pairs of its G2 glasses.
Both companies are taking very different approaches to selling “glasses with a HUD.” Meta’s display glasses are priced at $799, and are designed to do everything its popular non-display glasses do, with the addition of full-color, high-quality video and a distinctive, Ray-Ban look. Realty’s $599 G2 glasses also don’t have an onboard camera or audio, and the mono-color display is housed in a frame so discreet that no one would suspect they’re anything more than a “normal” pair of specs. They are designed to be fashionable, functional, everyday glasses that can also project a map in front of your eyes or Help you with the bartenders When you need them. Here is ARA review of the last generation of Even Realities glasses For more information.
The most important divide between these companies may prove to be their approach to software. All technology oscillates between “open” and “closed,” and Meta’s smart glasses are, so far, far on the restrictive end of the spectrum. Meta acts as an intermediary for what’s installed on your face computer, whether you’re rocking display glasses or with Ray-Ban Metas you get a highly curated experience. You don’t download apps, you turn “experiences” on and off. You can choose to disable or enable Apple Music, but you can’t choose to listen to music on new platforms developed by third parties. You can’t delete core features you don’t want. Even something as basic as changing the wake-up words for the AI is off limits; It’s “hey, meta” or it’s nothing.
What do you think so far?
Like Apple’s App Store, Reality’s approach is also semi-open. It’s not the “anything goes” approach of Linux, but you can use Even Realities’ library of approved apps and choose whether you need an in-glass EPUB reader, a chess game, or a charge indicator for your Tesla. Even Realities lets you remove key features you don’t use even on its glasses.
It’s worth noting 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 large, dynamic marketplace with everything from high-end games to small, junky tools on offer, and the company Close most of it First party VR developmentWhile promising to continue supporting indie devs. So it’s possible/probable that Meta is waiting for the hardware to mature before opening more open stores for its glasses or adding a “display” section to the existing Horizon store.
Open is not necessarily better
While a knee-jerk reaction might be to conclude that the choice offered by an open system is more desirable than a closed one, that hasn’t always been the case in the tech world. Nintendo dominated video games in the 1980s Maintaining strict quality controls on its games released on the NES, and few kids wanted a more “open” competitive system. Adobe’s Flash dominated everything the “open web” had to offer in the early 2000s, when another relatively closed system, Apple’s iPhone, died. refused to support him. As for Apple, there is an account for its iOS devices 63% share of the American smartphone marketWhile the closest competitor, the more open Android, is forever in second place. Time, as they say, will tell if consumers prefer a curated experience, a modular, open one, or even want glasses with a HUD at all.
