Text | Silicon Research Laboratory, author | Bai Jiajia
At Meta Connect 2024, Zuckerberg almost “ignored” Meta’s most popular hardware product, Ray-Ban Meta.
This AI glasses, jointly created by traditional opticians Ray-Ban and Meta, has sold more than 1 million units in less than two quarters. This year’s shipments are expected to exceed 2 million, making it one of the few products after the Apple Watch. Technology products that appear to have market potential.
But Zuckerberg didn’t seem excited about its success. Ray-Ban Meta only took up about 10 minutes of the nearly two-hour opening speech.
He spent more time introducing other products, including VR glasses Quest 3S, which is only one-tenth the price of Vision Pro, and AR glasses prototype Orion, even though the sales of these two products are far less than that of Ray-Ban Meta.
When it comes to Ray-Ban Meta, Zuckerberg only repeated some of the arguments that it has video, translation, and call functions. What is barely impressive is that he plans to sell this pair of glasses to blind people.
This misalignment is confusing. Why does Zuckerberg rarely mention the hot products in front of him?
By reviewing the popularity of Ray-Ban Meta and the competition among manufacturers, “Silicon Research Laboratory” found thatAI glasses may be a product that reaches its peak upon debut, but what lies ahead may be a downhill road.
Ray-ban Meta is popular, but it has little to do with AI
In Zuckerberg’s brief introduction to Ray-Ban Meta, he emphasized a new application “be my eyes.”
Source: Meta Connect 2024 video screenshot
Simply put, this function can connect people with visual impairments to volunteers with normal vision, allowing volunteers to see the user’s surrounding environment through the glasses’ camera and tell him through the phone.
Still a camera. Looking back at the popularity of Ray-Ban Meta, the cameras with a resolution of 12 million pixels (the same as iPhoneX) on both sides of the frame carry almost all of its highlights.
Such as AI.
In addition to Ray-Ban Meta, there are many glasses equipped with AI functions on the market, and their functions are similar. They all use AI-based generation capabilities to answer user questions with voice, just like Baidu hanging on their faces.
The difference is that most other products can only use voice input, while Ray-Ban Meta uses a mixed input of voice and video.
The difference is that when you want to know how high the calories are in the food in front of you, you can directly ask Ray-Ban Meta “how high the calories are in these foods”, while other glasses need to first tell it what you had for lunch. Obviously the former is much more convenient.
Back to the camera function itself.
The camera function of Ray-Ban Meta has three main features: convenience, first-person perspective, and clarity.
Source: Meta Connect 2024 video screenshot
Distill these three characteristics into specific scenarios——
When users suddenly see a scene worth recording, they don’t have to take out their mobile phones from their pockets, turn on the camera, and find a suitable angle to shoot. Just say “shoot a video” to it or tap the frame, and the camera next to the eye can actually capture what you see with the naked eye.
These advantages make it popular among video bloggers. Most of the praise for Ray-Ban Meta on Youtube focuses on the video function.
The same is true in China. Although it is not sold domestically, it does not prevent up owners from being willing to share it.
In addition to photography, Ray-Ban’s endorsement also played a decisive role.
Kenan, the product manager of Ray-Ban Meta, mentioned in an interview with “Silicon Valley 101” that after the product is released, users are more concerned about how to get their eyes checked, whether the style is fashionable, whether there are subsidies, and other issues involved in the traditional glasses process.
Ray-Ban provides answers to these questions.
As a traditional eyewear giant, Ray-Ban has professional optometrists and can provide customers with professional fashion and advice on obtaining subsidies. At the same time, compared with Ray-Ban’s traditional glasses, the Ray-Ban Meta is priced at $299.
Overall, the popularity of Ray-Ban Meta can be interpreted in three levels.
First of all, through cooperation with Ray-Ban, Ray-Ban Meta has become a qualified pair of glasses in terms of weight, style, and channels, making it relatively easy to open the market.
Secondly, on the basis of traditional glasses, camera and other functions are added as an increment, and it becomes a killer application and spreads.
Finally, some people believe that with the development of AI technology, AI glasses will become more and more powerful and will be a sustainable product.
“The success of Ray-Ban Meta is essentially the success of traditional glasses. AI only plays a supporting role in this generation,” said Zhang Haochen, co-founder of Thunderbird Innovation, an AR glasses manufacturer.
Domestic manufacturers unroll AI glasses and cross the river by touching Ray-Ban Meta
After the news of the booming sales of Ray-Ban Meta, AI glasses quickly became an area where many companies are competing to make bets.
Zhang Haochen revealed:“There are probably dozens of teams in China now starting to make AI glasses, and at least 10 teams have officially started, including new entrepreneurs and big companies like Xiaomi and ByteDance.”
The competition has begun, and the first thing major AI glasses players are interested in is their partners. Even Meta has almost been “pried” out of the corner.
Before July this year, Ray-Ban’s parent company Essilor Luxottica received a cooperation invitation from Google. The two parties planned to cooperate to produce AI glasses equipped with Gemini.
As early as 2012, Google released its first smart glasses, Google Glass. Its functions looked similar to today’s Ray-Ban Meta. It could shoot videos, check the weather, and send messages. There have been many iterations since, but they have always been tepid.
Perhaps Google sees hope in Ray-Ban Meta, but Meta obviously will not allow Google to “copy” easily.
Market news said Meta is planning to spend billions to acquire approximately 5% of Essilor Luxottica’s shares to participate in the latter’s corporate decisions.
However, even if Meta successfully acquires shares, it may be difficult to prevent EssilorLuxottica from cooperating with Google. Just like supermarkets do not have to only sell Coca-Cola, eyewear brands do not have to only cooperate with one AI glasses company.
For example, Doctor Glasses has not only signed an agreement with Thunderbird Innovation to jointly develop and sell the first generation of photography glasses and audio + AI glasses, but has also reached cooperation with smart glasses companies such as Xingji Meizu, Li Weike, and ROKID.
Cooperation with traditional opticians may be the most important inspiration that Ray-Ban Meta brings to other AI glasses players, but another important factor that contributed to its success – camera, has not been accepted by most companies.
At present, there are actually not many domestic manufacturers that have released AI glasses products, mainly Xiaomi, Huawei, and Honeycomb Technology. Most of the products previously released by other companies are AR glasses or VR with display functions.
Neither the MIJIA audio enjoyment glasses launched by Xiaomi in March this year nor the smart glasses 2 released by Huawei in May have camera functions.
The reason why I chose to give up taking photos is based on the Chinese people’s glasses-wearing habits.
The prototype of Ray-Ban Meta’s frame is called Wayfarer, which is a classic Ray-Ban sunglasses. Compared with ordinary glasses, the frames of sunglasses are thicker and heavier, suitable for adding various components.
However, there are relatively few users in China who have the habit of wearing sunglasses. AI glasses manufacturers want to start from traditional glasses channels like Ray-Ban Meta. The benchmark can only target myopia glasses, so they have to give up high-power cameras for comfort. unit.
Giving up on photography does not mean that domestic eyewear manufacturers have given up on the roll function.
Based on access to AI, Huawei Smart Glasses 2 supports intelligent broadcasting of weather, flights, schedules, taxis, etc., and can also provide users with reports on cervical spine health.
In addition to weather reporting, which is also supported by Ray-Bens Meta, the rest are currently unique features of Huawei Smart Glasses 2.
In addition to the volume partners and volume functions mentioned above, companies also include volume prices, volume AI model quantities, volume styles, etc.
Objectively speaking, many of these things are not what technology companies are good at, so questions arise:Why are they flocking in?
A more reasonable answer may be that they see a path to AR and VR in AI glasses.
After the Vision Pro was cold, there were a large number of VR and AR companies that were pessimistic about their development prospects. After all, even Apple failed to convince consumers to pay for it.
Source: X@Mushfiq Sajib
The emergence of AI glasses has given it a glimmer of hope. Perhaps it can support itself by copying Ray-Ban Meta until the day AR and VR achieve breakthroughs.
According to IDC data, Meta Ray-Ban shipments will reach 360,000 units in Q4 of 2023 and 100,000 units in Q1 of 2024. Sinolink Securities estimates that Meta Ray-Ban shipments may reach 500,000 units in Q2 of 2024, with annualized sales of Reached 2 million units.
In a more optimistic scenario, AI glasses can even attract some people to become users of AR glasses.
“We predict that in the future, all ordinary non-functional glasses will be rapidly upgraded and evolved into AI glasses, and there will be a certain penetration rate into AR glasses. This penetration rate will gradually increase from 10% to 20%.” AR solution provider Cui Haitao, founder of Gudong Technology, said.
There are at least three mountains ahead of AI glasses
After the above sorting, let’s return to the original question:
Why did Zuckerberg rarely mention Ray-Ban Meta at this Meta Connect2024?
Judging from the logic behind Ray-Ban Meta’s explosive sales and the dimensions of competition among entrants, there are three main reasons.
First, the functions of AI glasses have reached a critical point, and we can only make trade-offs, and it is difficult to make breakthroughs. Therefore, consumers’ future replacement demand is not strong.
Specifically, glasses themselves are low-frequency consumer goods. Except for a few people who pursue fashion, more people just buy them to deal with specific scenes.
When consumers already have a Ray-Ban Meta that can be worn while driving, which helps them solve the problem of not having time to wear headphones and take photos, it is difficult to have the desire to buy a new generation of AI glasses.
To some extent, the lack of innovation in PCs and smartphones in recent years has led to the continuous decline in global shipments, which has proved the possibility of AI glasses being “incapable of succeeding”.
According to Canalys data, global smartphone shipments in 2023 will be 1.14 billion units, a year-on-year decrease of 4% and a new low in ten years.
Second, even if AI glasses are regarded as a way station leading to AR and VR, the price is too high.
Comparing eyewear brands with offline stores of Huawei, Apple, Xiaomi and other brands, there are significant differences in product display between the two –
In order to meet the personalized needs of consumers, optical stores have hundreds of SKUs in a single store, while technology product stores only need to display the flagship products of the current season or recent period.
This difference means that the inventory management difficulty of the former is several times or even dozens of times that of the latter, and it also involves production line adjustment, design, marketing and other aspects.
Ray-Ban Meta has more than 150 styles, which is an astronomical number for a technology product. If new products are launched, the inventory and production line management pressure will be doubled. Even with the help of Ray-Ban, Meta may not be able to play well. change.
Third, there is also a question mark as to how long the cooperation between Meta and Ray-Ban can last.
There is a competitive relationship between AI glasses and traditional glasses. The increase in sales of the former means the decline in sales of the latter. Even if Meta can form a community of interests with traditional glasses brands through equity participation, it will be difficult to protect the interests of dealers who operate multiple glasses brands. Not damaged.
After all, at the same price point, compared with traditional glasses, AI glasses obviously have a higher gross profit.
The willingness to upgrade may be relatively low, the cost of building a new team is high, and the stability of cooperation is questionable… In summary, even if Meta has a hot product, it is not easy to continue the AI glasses business.
Of course, these problems are not unsolvable, and there may be new solutions in different markets.
Still taking the inventory management pressure caused by numerous styles as an example:
Neither Xiaomi nor Huawei adopts the one-piece design of Ray-ban Meta, but concentrates all functional units on the temples.
This approach means that users can freely match frames and meet consumers’ personalized needs with lower inventory, just like matching Apple Watch with various straps.
However, since the frame and frame are separated and wiring cannot be carried out, the possibility of adding camera functions is also lost. But as mentioned above, in the domestic market, the camera function may be a necessary sacrifice.
This may also bring some inspiration to domestic AI glasses manufacturers. Just as Huawei’s tri-folding surprised many people, they may also need to jump out of the paradigm defined by Ray-Ban Meta and find opportunities to “overtake in corners.”
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