Apple prepares smart glasses to take on Meta, launch tipped for next year

While the focus is on Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro series and the upcoming foldable, the Cupertino-based tech giant is slowly looking to enter new categories in order to shore up its revenue. As per a new report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is looking to enter the smart glasses category currently dominated by Meta’s glasses.

Notably, Meta had just launched a cheaper version of its smart glasses last week with a starting price of $299. The glasses, which came in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, didn’t feature Ray-Ban or Oakley branding and feature a 12MP camera, 8 hours of battery life and dedicated speakers.

Meanwhile, Apple’s alternative to the Meta Glasses could be arriving sooner than most people would expect, with the Apple smart glasses tipped to arrive next year.

Apple’s smart glasses debut:

As per Gurman, Apple is looking to enter the market with its own smart glasses by the end of next year. Reportedly, Apple has an inherent advantage over Meta in that its glasses would have better connectivity with iPhones, which once again could tempt users already in the Apple ecosystem to look forward to its glasses as well.

Meanwhile, Apple has also reportedly limited interoperability between iOS and Meta Glasses, and things can only go downhill from here.

However, Apple also does seem to have another trick up its sleeve by introducing the glasses under its own brand rather than through a third-party partnership, which would make its products very price competitive as well.

Apple’s Vision Pro chief quits:

Meanwhile, Apple is also facing competition from the likes of OpenAI, which is developing its own line of AI-powered wearables. Recently, Apple’s chief of the Vision Pro headset and smart glasses programme, Paul Meade, had also decided to quit the company in favour of the ChatGPT maker.

Meade will work hand in hand with former Apple designer Jony Ive to develop the upcoming AI products from OpenAI that could also debut by next year.

As per a Bloomberg report, however, Meade’s exit came amidst a broader restructuring effort inside Apple’s hardware division after John Ternus was appointed the CEO-in-waiting and Johny Srouji was appointed the chief hardware officer.

This reportedly led to a number of vice presidents reporting to Ternus being given new roles and some of them feeling demoted.

Meade and various other leaders in the hardware division were then made to report to Tom Marieb, the new vice president of hardware engineering, instead of Srouji. This meant that these executives were essentially drawn down a level in the organisation.