During Meta’s Q4 2025 earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a striking prediction about the long-term role of smart glasses in everyday life. He argued that it’s increasingly difficult to picture the future without them-a statement reflecting Meta’s strategic shift and broader tech industry trends.
A Strategic Pivot from the Metaverse to AI Wearables
Zuckerberg’s remarks come as Meta transitions away from its costly gamble on the metaverse – a pivot that has seen massive spending and restructuring within Meta’s Reality Labs division. While virtual reality initiatives have struggled to gain commercial traction, AI-powered smart glasses have emerged as one of the company’s fastest-growing products.
On the earnings call, he said something revealing about this vision: “It’s hard to imagine a world in several years where most glasses that people wear aren’t AI glasses.” He compared the current state of smart glasses to the early stages of the smartphone revolution, suggesting we are on the brink of another major shift in personal computing.
The Smartphone Parallel
Zuckerberg drew an explicit parallel between AI glasses and smartphones. Just as flip phones quickly gave way to feature-rich mobile computers, he sees smart glasses becoming a ubiquitous interface for digital life. His reasoning is partly practical: billions of people already wear glasses or contact lenses, creating a built-in potential user base for AI-enabled eyewear.
This analogy highlights the leap Meta anticipates-from phones tucked in pockets to digital assistants visible and accessible at eye level.
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Growth in the Smart Glasses Market
Meta’s optimism is backed by sales data. Zuckerberg noted that its smart glasses sales tripled over the past year, a sign of accelerating consumer interest. He even called them “some of the fastest-growing consumer electronics in history.”
The company currently offers multiple models, including Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley-branded smart glasses, blending AI features with eyewear designed for exercise and everyday use.
Why This Matters
Meta’s push into smart glasses matters on multiple levels:
- Consumer tech evolution: The move signals a shift toward wearable AI devices that deliver real-time information without requiring a phone.
- Industry momentum: Other tech giants (such as Google, Samsung, Apple, and Snap) are also investing in wearable vision tech, a sign that the industry broadly views glasses as a frontier for computing.
- Corporate strategy: The emphasis on glasses reflects Meta’s widening focus on artificial intelligence and wearables as core future revenue drivers, even as its metaverse ambitions cool.
The Bigger Picture
Zuckerberg’s vision isn’t just about hardware: it’s about rethinking how we interact with digital services. Smart glasses equipped with AI could function as always-on digital assistants -seeing what you see, hearing what you hear, and offering relevant information and suggestions seamlessly.
For Zuckerberg, that future feels inevitable, so much so that a world without AI glasses feels hard to imagine. Whether consumers will embrace that vision as wholly as he predicts remains to be seen, but the industry is clearly gearing up for the challenge. AIBase
Why a Future Without AI-powered Smart Glasses Is “Hard to Imagine” Zuckerberg
Senior Reporter/Editor
Bio: Ugochukwu is a freelance journalist and Editor at AIbase.ng, with a strong professional focus on investigative reporting. He holds a degree in Mass Communication and brings extensive experience in news gathering, reporting, and editorial writing. With over a decade of active engagement across diverse news sources, he contributes in-depth analytical, practical, and expository articles that explore artificial intelligence and its real-world impact. His seasoned newsroom experience and well-established information networks provide AIbase.ng with credible, timely, and high-quality coverage of emerging AI developments.