Are smart glasses finally cool? Ray-Ban Meta sales take off

Sometimes a new technology comes along and almost before you realize it, we’re all converts. With smartphones, that didn’t exactly happen overnight, but the momentum of the shift was impossible to ignore. But since then, other mobile innovations have been harder sells; smartwatches have absolutely made their impact, but are also far from ubiquitous. Maybe the most difficult move of all has been convincing shoppers to give smart glasses a try. And while plenty of prominent companies have struggled to do so over the years, today we’re hearing some promising news of growth in this all-too maligned segment.

It’s been over a decade now since Google Glass got us thinking seriously about how modern smart glasses might be useful — and just as long since massive societal pushback effectively killed the project commercially. But in recent years, smart glasses that look less like they come out of Star Trek and more like, well, regular old sunglasses, have slowly been gaining steam. Now EssilorLuxottica has shared that its latest generation of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are selling like hotcakes, as Reuters reports.

We first saw the partnership between Ray-Ban and Meta get underway three years ago, with the launch of the Ray-Ban Stories — which felt like a direct reaction to Snapchat Spectacles. Like existing versions of those, the Ray-Ban glasses don’t bother with a display of their own. After a couple years, the smart glasses got a refresh that saw them drop the Stories name, upgrade their cameras to 12MP, and install some hot new silicon ready for AI features. Apparently, improvements like that are exactly what shoppers have been looking for, and EssilorLuxottica’s CEO reports that this new generation has sold more units in just a few months than the original Stories did in the entire two years they were available.

While we don’t get any precise figures, that’s clearly the sort of trend Meta and EssilorLuxottica want to see, and we’re very curious what’s driving it — is this mostly the much more capable camera package? We’re sure Meta would love to see its AI features like image identification or translation tools factoring heavily into purchasing decisions. Right now, the company’s waiting for progress on AI-related legislation in Europe before unlocking the smart glasses’ full potential there — it will be interesting to see how sales respond if and when that happens.

In any event, Meta sounds very pleased with how this arrangement has been going, and The Financial Times reports that Zuckerberg and company are considering acquiring “a small stake” in the eyewear giant.