Shipments of AI-enabled smart glasses more than doubled in the first half of 2026, according to estimates from the market research firm Omdia, which counted 4.2 million units worldwide — a rise of 127 percent year on year.
Meta took about 3.4 million of those units, roughly 81 percent of the market, in line with Counterpoint Research's estimate for the second half of 2025. The figures are consistent with disclosures from EssilorLuxottica, Meta's partner in developing and selling most of the devices, which said in July that revenue from AI glasses nearly doubled in the second quarter of 2026. Including the roughly two million units sold between the October 2023 launch of the Ray-Ban Meta glasses and the end of 2024, and more than seven million sold in 2025, cumulative sales have almost certainly passed ten million.
The category is still small next to established wearables: IDC expects about 160 million smartwatches to ship in 2026. How the market develops will depend on new entrants. Google and Samsung plan to launch their first smart glasses this autumn, and Apple is expected to follow in 2027.
Meta continues to widen its line-up. In the first half of the year it and EssilorLuxottica released new Ray-Ban models designed for people who wear prescription glasses, plus a cheaper collection under the Meta Glasses brand, and announced more models at Meta Connect 2026, including the camera-less Ray-Ban Meta Audio and a third-generation Ray-Ban Meta. The Meta Ray-Ban Display went on sale outside the US this week and reaches Germany on 13 October; the partners aim for more than 100 variants across Ray-Ban, Oakley and Meta Glasses by the end of the year. Privacy concerns about camera-based glasses persist.
