AI Glasses Market

The AI glasses market is the set of published estimates for shipments, revenue and vendor share in eyewear that runs an AI assistant, whether or not it has a display. As of 2026-08-01 the market has no agreed size, because no two research firms count the same devices. For calendar 2025, Omdia put global "AI glasses" shipments at 8.7 million units, up 322% year over year, while IDC put global "smart glasses" shipments at 14.8 million ^[24][2][3]. That 1.7x gap is a difference in basket width, not a disagreement about how many pairs left factories: Omdia counts only glasses carrying an LLM assistant, and IDC's headline figure adds plain audio glasses and the whole AR/VR line, virtual reality headsets included, to the same total.

The definitional problem is the defining feature of this data. Almost every widely repeated conflict about AI glasses volumes, including the several competing figures for Meta's market share and the four different totals for China in 2025, resolves into a category boundary or a metric type rather than a factual dispute. Reading any single number here requires knowing four things: which firm published it, exactly what its category label includes, whether it measures shipments into the channel or sales out of it, and which period it covers. This article states all four with every figure and does not merge estimates across firms.

Why the published figures disagree

The firms active in this segment use at least six different category definitions, four of which are called some variant of "smart glasses."

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The sell-in versus sell-through distinction matters as much as the category boundary. IDC, Counterpoint, Omdia and TrendForce publish shipments, meaning units invoiced into the distribution channel. CINNO, RUNTO and Wellsenn XR publish sales to end customers, and Wellsenn's China figures cover online channels only ^[11]. A retail figure and a shipment figure for the same market and period are not comparable in either direction, and neither is a fixed fraction of the other.

One apparent independent check is not independent. Canalys, historically a separate tracker of this segment, has been folded into Omdia; its newsroom URL now permanently redirects to Omdia's press page ^[12]. Treating the two as separate firms overstates how many independent estimates are in circulation.

What 2025 actually shows

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The EssilorLuxottica number is the only first-party unit figure in the segment, and it works as a sanity check on Omdia rather than as a rival estimate. Omdia's 7.4 million units for Meta AI glasses in 2025, up 281.3%, and EssilorLuxottica's "more than 7 million" for its 2025 financial year describe substantially the same products: the Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta families plus Meta Ray-Ban Display ^[24][15].

Meta's share depends on the denominator

Five credible figures for Meta's share were published between December 2025 and June 2026. They span 16 percentage points and none of them contradicts the others.

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Two things separate Omdia's 85.2% from Counterpoint's 82%, and neither is a disagreement about Meta. Counterpoint's smart glasses basket contains basic smart audio glasses, which were 12% of its H2 2025 shipments and a segment Meta does not sell into, while Omdia counts only devices that carry an LLM assistant and so leaves them out ^[7][25]. The periods are also different, a full year against a half year. IDC's two figures are lower again because IDC's denominator adds the whole AR/VR line, virtual and mixed reality headsets included, which neither Omdia's AI glasses basket nor Counterpoint's smart glasses basket counts. That line runs on its own cycle: IDC put it down 23.2% year over year in Q3 2025, and Counterpoint put VR alone down 17% in Q1 2026 ^[4][6].

IDC publishes no unit denominator for its Q1 2026 share table, though the source line under it names the Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker and the Worldwide Quarterly Augmented and Virtual Reality Headset Tracker together ^[22]. IDC's own published totals point the same way. IDC reported 3.566 million smart eyewear units for the quarter, made up of 2.248 million audio and camera glasses and 1.318 million AR/VR units ^[16]. Working from those two figures, a 69.2% share of the total comes to about 2.47 million units, more than the entire display-less line, so the figure cannot be a display-less-only share; it is a share of the combined basket. That is an inference from IDC's numbers rather than a statement IDC makes. The presence of XREAL and Viture, which sell display-only viewers, alongside Meta and Xiaomi in the same table points the same way ^[22].

Forecasts, and two firms revising themselves

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TrendForce's 950,000 is not a competing estimate of IDC's 3.0 million display-glasses forecast. TrendForce counts near-eye display glasses only, while IDC's optical see-through line includes the tethered birdbath viewers that XREAL and Viture sell in volume. Averaging the two, or presenting them as a disagreement, misstates both. IDC's mixed reality forecast is separate again: it is anchored by Meta's Quest series and ByteDance's headsets, which are not eyewear at all, though IDC's widest smart eyewear total sweeps them in ^[22].

IDC's China forecast is the clearest case of a firm revising itself. On 2025-11-20 IDC published a ten-insights outlook putting 2026 China smart glasses shipments above 4.915 million units within a global figure above 23.687 million, and expecting Chinese vendors to supply 45% of global shipments ^[5]. Four weeks later, on 2025-12-16, IDC's quarterly tracker release put the same 2026 China number at 4.508 million, a downward revision of about 407,000 units, split into 3.434 million audio and camera glasses and 1.073 million AR/VR devices ^[4]. The later figure is the current one; the earlier figure is superseded and should not be quoted as IDC's forecast.

Omdia revised in the other direction and by more. Its September 2025 release estimated 5.1 million AI glasses shipped in 2025 and forecast more than 10 million for 2026; the March 2026 release replaced both with an actual of 8.7 million and a 2026 forecast above 15 million ^[24][25]. Anyone quoting a 2026 Omdia number should check which release it came from.

Q1 2026: two headline growth rates

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IDC's +130.1% and Counterpoint's +83% look like a large disagreement and are not one. Both are blends over baskets that include virtual reality headsets, so VR inclusion is not what separates them; the weighting is. Counterpoint reports VR down 17% year over year, which drags its aggregate down, and for its blend to land at 83% when its display-less line grew 210% and its AR line 136%, VR must have been close to half of its year-earlier intelligent eyewear base. That is an inference from the three published growth rates, not a figure Counterpoint states. The two firms are not directly comparable below the headline either: IDC's display-less line grew 167% against Counterpoint's 210%, and IDC's AR/VR line at 86% is a combined figure that cannot be set against Counterpoint's 136% for AR glasses alone, because Counterpoint reports VR separately. IDC also put full-year 2024 display-less shipments at 2.7 million, meaning the category shipped roughly a full year of 2024 volume in the first quarter of 2026 ^[22].

Display-equipped glasses: the fast part of a small base

Omdia put display-equipped glasses at 8.4% of AI glasses in 2025, or 730,000 units, up from 3.3% in 2024, and said Chinese companies, naming Rokid, Alibaba and Even Realities, held 71% of that sub-segment ^[24][3]. Counterpoint tracks the same shift through optics: waveguide devices rose from 13% of AR smart glasses in H2 2024 to 19% in H1 2025 and 38% in H2 2025, with waveguide shipments up more than 600% year over year in H2 2025 while video-centric birdbath and flat-prism devices grew about 80% ^[14]. By Q1 2026 Counterpoint had waveguide at 42% of AR glasses against 18% a year earlier, with birdbath and flat prism down from 82% to 58% ^[6][17].

Leadership within augmented reality eyewear splits by optics. In birdbath and flat-prism devices Counterpoint put RayNeo at 41% and VITURE at 34% in Q1 2026, VITURE having grown 281% year over year. In waveguide devices it put Rokid first globally, with Meta at 38%, Even Realities at 9% and Alibaba at 5%; Counterpoint's text does not give Rokid a number, and the 41% widely quoted for it comes from IT Home reading the chart in the same release ^[6][17]. Omdia, on its own wider AI glasses basket, ranked Rokid second worldwide for 2025 behind Meta, with Xiaomi third ^[24][3].

TrendForce's supply-chain view explains why display volumes remain small. It reported that orders for Lumus geometric waveguides destined for Meta Ray-Ban Display were revised up 87.5%, from about 80,000 units to 150,000, within six months of launch, and named OmniVision (LCoS), GoerOptics (optical engine assemblies) and SCHOTT (waveguide optical parts) as the other suppliers. It also cited a Meta target of 500,000 units shipped within two years ^[8].

There is no single number one in China

Rankings for AI glasses in China are contested because each firm ranks a different segment on a different metric. Every rank below is correct inside its own scope and wrong outside it.

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CINNO's Q1 2026 breakdown shows how much the segment mix matters: all-in-one AR glasses with a display grew 506% year over year, tethered AR glasses 41%, and screenless AI glasses 97%, on a China total of 202,000 units sold, up 108% ^[9]. Xiaomi's AI glasses fell 18% quarter over quarter in CINNO's data for want of a new model, while Alibaba's AI glasses, reported by Chinese trackers under the Qianwen brand, entered the top five on the strength of the G1 and S1 ^[9]. Huawei entered the camera-glasses segment in April 2026 ^[9].

China totals span 3.3x

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Omdia and IDC differ by 2.5x on the same metric purely through basket width, and each computes China's share against its own global base, giving 10.9% and 16.7% respectively ^[1][2]. RUNTO sits between them while measuring something else entirely. The iiMedia figure is the outlier and should be handled with care: the firm has a weak reputation for methodology transparency, and its companion forecast of 41.533 million China units by 2029 is far outside every other published trajectory. It appears here because it reached print through China Economic Weekly, a People's Daily group title, and therefore circulates widely in Chinese coverage ^[13].

A policy change sits underneath the 2026 China forecasts. Smart glasses were added to China's national new-purchase subsidy catalogue for the first time in 2026, with the subsidy capped at 500 yuan per item; RUNTO credits this, along with cheaper domestic optics, as a driver of its 2026 growth forecast ^[10].

Meta Ray-Ban Display: two figures, and none from Meta

Meta Ray-Ban Display went on sale in the United States in the autumn of 2025. Two unit figures exist for it, from two analyst firms, and they differ by more than 5x.

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No reconciliation is offered here because none is published. The two cover different periods, a full year against a first sales quarter, but Meta Ray-Ban Display was on sale for only part of 2025, so the windows overlap heavily and the gap is too large for the period difference alone to explain. Meta has never published a unit figure for the product, and EssilorLuxottica reports AI glasses in aggregate rather than by model ^[15]. What is corroborated three ways is the supply constraint: Meta paused its planned early-2026 rollout in the UK, France, Italy and Canada to prioritise US orders ^[18]; Counterpoint attributed 2025 supply limits to "the relatively low production yield of key components" ^[14]; and TrendForce documented the waveguide order revisions above ^[8].

Units are not profits

Unit growth has not translated into segment profitability, and the three companies that disclose financials show three different pictures.

EssilorLuxottica, which manufactures the Meta lines, reported full-year 2025 group revenue of EUR 28,491 million, up 11.2% at constant exchange rates with Q4 up 18.4%, and an adjusted operating margin of 16.0% at constant rates that it described as "impacted by US tariffs and AI-glasses" ^[15]. The product line that added more than 7 million units also diluted group margin. By the first half of 2026 the company reported AI glasses revenue "almost doubling" in Q2 and an adjusted operating margin of 18.6%, or 18.9% at constant rates, the basis on which the 16.0% above is stated ^[19].

XREAL filed for a Hong Kong listing on 2026-04-01. Its application put 2025 revenue at RMB 516 million, roughly $76 million at the end-July 2026 rate of about 6.75 yuan to the dollar, on 133,731 pairs sold, with a gross margin of 35.2% against 18.8% in 2023, an adjusted net loss of RMB 250 million for the year, and cash and equivalents down to RMB 64 million from RMB 205 million a year earlier. More than 70% of revenue came from outside China. iResearch, the consultant commissioned for the listing document, ranked XREAL first in AR glasses worldwide in 2025, with a 27.0% revenue share and a 24.8% volume share. That is a full-year figure on iResearch's own AR glasses definition, and it does not contradict Counterpoint's finding that RayNeo led video-centric AR glasses in H2 2025 with 42% against XREAL's 28% ^[20][14]. The RMB 250 million is an adjusted, non-IFRS figure; anyone comparing it with the larger loss other coverage quotes is comparing two different measures. On the adjusted figure 36Kr calculated that XREAL lost roughly RMB 1,800, about $267, on every pair sold ^[20].

Vuzix, a listed pure play in the segment, reported 2025 revenue of $6,280,611 in its annual report, up from $5,754,556 in 2024, with a gross loss of $1,062,394 and a net loss of $32,273,128 ^[21]. Its gross margin has been negative in each of the last three financial years ^[21]. The gross loss is not a per-unit one: the same filing shows product cost of sales of $3,269,267 against product revenue of $4,676,632, with the negative margin coming from $2,220,836 of unapplied manufacturing overhead, a $503,400 obsolescence provision and $677,931 of depreciation inside cost of sales ^[21]. A company can be a decade-long participant in this market and still run a plant far below the volume that would cover its fixed cost.

What the firms do not publish

Several figures readers expect to exist do not. Counterpoint published growth rates and shares for H2 2025 and Q1 2026 but no global unit total for either smart glasses or AR glasses, so any claim that "Counterpoint says the market was X million units" is constructed rather than quoted ^[6][7][14]. Some of its vendor numbers exist only inside chart images, which is why the Chinese vendor split above and Rokid's waveguide share reach print through IT Home rather than through Counterpoint's own text ^[17]. Meta has published no unit figure for any of its eyewear; every number in circulation comes either from an analyst estimate or from EssilorLuxottica's aggregate disclosure, which does not break out models ^[15]. Neither IDC nor Counterpoint publishes a unit denominator for its headline vendor-share table, which is why the same company can correctly be described as holding 69.2%, 75.7%, 82%, 84% and 85.2% of "the market" within seven months.

References

1. ^"Omdia：2025全球AI眼镜出货量达870万台，中国大陆市场增长最快." Sina Finance, 2026-03-10. finance.sina.com.cn/...doc-inhqpaeq0012838.shtml
2. ^"AI glasses are catching on in China, from shopping to cheating." Rest of World, 2026-03-27. restofworld.org/...i-glasses-cheating-privacy-boom
3. ^"Omdia Report: Global AI Glasses Shipments Soar to 8.7 Million Units, with Mainland China Emerging as the Fastest-Growing Market." C114Pro, 2026-03-09. c114pro.com/...151071
4. ^"IDC预测：2026年中国智能眼镜市场将持续高速发展，出货量达450.8万台." 通信世界网, 2025-12-16. cww.net.cn/article
5. ^"AI点亮生态纪元：IDC 2026年中国智能眼镜市场十大洞察." Sohu, 2025-11-20. sohu.com/...956451357_121124366
6. ^"Global Intelligent Eyewear Market Up 83% YoY in Q1 2026 Driven by Strong AR, Smart Glasses Demand." Counterpoint Research, 2026-06-24. counterpointresearch.com/...iven-by-demand-q1-2026
7. ^"Global Smart Glasses Shipments Grew 139% YoY in H2 2025; Meta Expanded Market Share to 82%." Counterpoint Research, 2026-02-26. counterpointresearch.com/...Percent-YoY-in-H2-2025
8. ^"Component Orders for Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses Revised Up Twice, Driving Global AR Glasses Shipments to 950,000 Units in 2026, Says TrendForce." TrendForce, 2026-01-30. trendforce.com/...20260130-12908
9. ^"Q1'26消费级AI/AR市场销量持续增长，同比增幅108%." CINNO Research, 2026-05-22. cinno.com.cn/...r_ai_ar_sales_grow_108_percent_yoy
10. ^"洛图科技：2026年中国智能眼镜销量320万台，同比增长120%." Sina Finance, 2026-04-19. finance.sina.cn/...detail-inhuzxax9128951.d
11. ^"维深Wellsenn XR：千问AI眼镜稳居线上销量第一 市场份额达53%." Shanghai Securities News, via Eastmoney, 2026-04-22. finance.eastmoney.com/...202604223713960979
12. ^"Newsroom." Canalys, retrieved 2026-08-01; returns HTTP 301 to omdia.tech.informa.com/pr. canalys.com/newsroom
13. ^"「百镜大战」：等一个爆款." 中国经济周刊 (China Economic Weekly), 2026-01-15. paper.people.com.cn/...content_30136980
14. ^"Global AR Smart Glasses Shipments Grow 148% YoY in H2 2025; Waveguide-based Devices Surge Over 600%." Counterpoint Research, 2026-04-08. counterpointresearch.com/...Surge-Over-600-Percent
15. ^"Q4/Full Year 2025 Results." EssilorLuxottica, 2026-02-11. essilorluxottica.com/...q4-full-year-2025-results
16. ^"IDC：第一季度全球智能眼镜市场出货量356.6万台，同比增长130.1%." Sina Finance, 2026-06-16. finance.sina.com.cn/...doc-inicqsxv4451822.shtml
17. ^"CounterPoint 报告 2026Q1 中国智能眼镜出货量：小米 28%、阿里 21%、理想 3%." IT之家, 2026-06-25. ithome.com/...225
18. ^"Meta delays global rollout of Ray-Ban Display glasses on strong US demand, supply squeeze." Reuters, via The Star, 2026-01-06. thestar.com.my/...-strong-us-demand-supply-squeeze
19. ^"Q2/H1 2026 Results." EssilorLuxottica, 2026-07-28. essilorluxottica.com/...q2-h1-2026-results
20. ^"AR Glasses XREAL's 'No. 1' Dilemma: 27% Market Share but Only 500 Million Yuan in Annual Sales." 36Kr, 2026-04-03. eu.36kr.com/...3750612889649669
21. ^"Vuzix Corporation Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025." US Securities and Exchange Commission, filed 2026-03. sec.gov/...0001104659-26-027163-index
22. ^"Smart Glasses Surge: The XR Market Is Rewriting Its Own Rules." Jitesh Ubrani, IDC, 2026-06-15. idc.com/...he-xr-market-is-rewriting-its-own-rules
23. ^"Augmented and Virtual Reality Headsets Market Insights." IDC, updated 2026-07-01. idc.com/...arvr
24. ^"Omdia: Global AI glasses shipments reach 8.7 million units with Mainland China emerging as the fastest-growing market." Omdia, 2026-03-05. omdia.tech.informa.com/...e-fastest-growing-market
25. ^"AI glasses market poised to hit 10 million units in 2026, Omdia forecasts." Omdia, 2025-09-16. omdia.tech.informa.com/...-in-2026-omdia-forecasts