The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses have been named one of Oprah’s favorite things and are gaining traction: At one point in July, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “Demand is still outpacing our ability to build them.”
While Meta basks in demand, with more than 700,000 pairs of Ray Ban Metas sold, an industry competitor is eyeing the same space.
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According to a new Bloomberg report, Apple is internally exploring entering the smart glasses field with products of its own. The effort, internally named Atlas, began last week when Apple’s Product Systems Quality Team asked select Apple employees to join “an upcoming user study with current market smart glasses.” The effort is part of “testing and developing products,” Apple wrote in the email.
Apple is planning more focus groups in “the near future” to identify what its employees like about smart glasses already on the market, according to Bloomberg. Apple intended to keep the project secret.
This wouldn’t be the first category where Meta and Apple’s offerings overlap. Apple released its $3,500 Vision Pro in February; the product is in the same virtual and augmented reality headset category as Meta’s much cheaper $500 Quest 3. A comparison on CNET between the Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro shows that the Quest 3 is a stronger gaming and fitness system while the Vision Pro comes out on top for work tasks.
Related: She Sent a Cold Email to Meta Judging Its Ray-Bans. Now She Runs the Wearables Division.
The $299 Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses come equipped with a camera to take pictures and videos, an Ask Meta AI assistant to respond to queries starting “Hey Meta,” and audio to make calls, listen to music, and send voice-to-text texts.
Meta wants to go beyond the glasses one day as well. At Meta Connect in September, Zuckerberg unveiled the first prototype of Orion, smart glasses that bring holograms or 3D avatars to your field of vision. The Orion glasses, complete with an accompanying neural interface wristband that detects thoughts by sensing impulses on your skin, left early testers “giddy” Zuckerberg said.
“These are the first glasses to be controlled by a wristband that picks up on thoughts,” Zuckerberg said at the time.
It remains to be seen how Apple intends to compete with Meta on the smart glasses front — but Monday’s Bloomberg report shows that Apple is keeping its eye on the products.