Samsung is working on a Ray-Ban Meta glasses competitor with Google Gemini AI, The Information reports.
The project was greenlit earlier this year, The Information’s Sylvia Varnham O’Regan writes, after intense debates inside Google around whether to convince Samsung to build full AR glasses or simpler smart glasses like Ray-Ban Meta glasses, with Google and Samsung executives landing on the latter.
The report comes just under a year after Samsung filed a trademark for ‘Samsung Glasses’ in the UK, which could indicate the product name.
Google Wants To Steal The Ray-Ban Partnership From Meta
Google reportedly wants to steal the Ray-Ban partnership from Meta for its own Gemini glasses, but Mark Zuckerberg has a plan to stop it.
Samsung and Google may struggle to sell glasses of this kind without Meta’s partner EssilorLuxottica, however. The company has a near monopoly on the eyewear market worldwide, and its brands like Ray-Ban and Oakley are among the most recognizable on the planet.
In July, The Verge reported that Google wanted to steal the EssilorLuxottica partnership from Meta for exactly this reason, but failed. Last month Meta and EssilorLuxottica announced an agreement extending their partnership “into the next decade” to develop “multi-generational smart eyewear products”.
Meta Extends Its Ray-Ban Partnership Into The 2030s
Meta and Ray-Ban’s owner have extended their partnership “into the next decade” to develop “multi-generational smart eyewear products”.
Google and Samsung are also partnering on a high-end mixed reality headset to take on Apple Vision Pro, which has been in the works for years now. Google will handle the software while Samsung is handling the hardware using Qualcomm’s XR2+ Gen 2 chipset. But a recent report suggests it could be delayed once again, later into 2025.
