The smart glasses market is heating up \u2013 and fast. With Meta, Snap, Google and a wave of Chinese manufacturers all vying for position, businesses are being forced to pay closer attention to a technology that, until recently, many had written off as a niche curiosity.<\/p>\n
Cortney Harding, Founder of Spatial Computing Consultancy Friends with Holograms,<\/strong> joined UC Today to break down what the latest developments mean for enterprise buyers and where the market is headed over the next twelve months.<\/p>\n Mass Market vs. Enterprise: Room for Both<\/p>\n Meta has already sold close to ten million units of its smart glasses and has new hardware on the way. Snap, meanwhile, is taking a different approach \u2013 higher-end hardware, a steeper price point, and a clearer enterprise proposition. According to Harding, these aren\u2019t competing strategies so much as complementary ones.<\/p>\n \u201cI think there\u2019s room in this market for everyone who is right now in market and coming to market to be successful in different categories.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Google is also generating significant enterprise interest, particularly through its partnership with XReal on the upcoming Aura device. Apple, as ever, remains a wildcard \u2013 but one that businesses are watching closely.<\/p>\n Privacy: A Real Concern, but Not an Insurmountable One<\/p>\n Privacy remains one of the most frequently raised objections to workplace adoption of smart glasses. Harding acknowledges the concern but puts it in context. Smartphones, CCTV cameras and ring doorbells already record constantly \u2013 glasses are simply more visible.<\/p>\n \u201cI think people are a little overly sensitive about the glasses now and maybe under sensitive about the amount of other recording that\u2019s happening in the world,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n For enterprise deployments specifically, she notes that work devices already operate under different privacy expectations than personal ones \u2013 and that most companies will default to the most conservative applicable standard.<\/p>\n AI Subscriptions: A Precedent Worth Watching<\/p>\n Meta recently moved its conversational AI feature to a $19.99 monthly subscription. Harding doesn\u2019t see this as a red flag for enterprise buyers, who are already accustomed to paying for AI services. The bigger risk, she argues, is unpredictable pricing shifts down the line \u2013 something the broader AI industry is already grappling with.<\/p>\n What\u2019s Coming<\/p>\n The next few months will see a significant wave of new hardware hitting the market, including Google\u2019s audio-only glasses, the XReal Aura and new Snap Spectacles. Looking further ahead, 2027 is shaping up to be a landmark year for fully-featured AR glasses from multiple major players.<\/p>\n For enterprises evaluating their options, the message is clear: the window to get ahead of this technology is open \u2013 but it won\u2019t stay that way for long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The smart glasses market is heating up \u2013 and fast. With Meta, Snap, Google and a wave of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[74],"tags":[18,249094,19,17,28340,82,9918],"class_list":["post-586802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-eire","tag-generative-ai-security","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-security-and-compliance","tag-technology","tag-wearable-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116923710067986461","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n