Heated competition, legal drama, and the future of tech on the line? Start writing the movie now, I guess.
If there’s one thing we can count on this year in the world of consumer tech, it’s that we won’t have a lot of RAM, and we will have a lot of smart glasses. If you needed any further proof of the latter prediction, Samsung has you covered.
During an earnings call this week, Samsung confirmed that its AR glasses (which have already been teased) are coming this year. That’s not the most detailed announcement to be sure, but in context with the smart glasses field as a whole, it’s making 2026 look like the year that smart glasses go mainstream.
We don’t know much about Samsung’s smart glasses, but they’ll arguably be the biggest name in the space when they finally drop (sorry, Meta). The biggest name for the time being, that is. Google, which is working in collaboration with Samsung on Android XR software, is also eyeing its own separate hardware, and plans to release its first pair of smart glasses since 2013’s Google Glass this year—an audio-only pair of specs similar to the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses.
With those names in the mix, you’re looking at a pretty powerful trio of companies in the smart glasses game: Meta, Samsung, and Google.
