Apple's first pair of smart glasses is heading into a market that just exploded, not one it's about to invent.
Worldwide shipments of AI-powered glasses jumped 263% year-over-year in the first half of 2026, according to Counterpoint Research, and 96% of those units had no display at all. Apple's own glasses are rumored to fit that same display-less mold, leaning on cameras, audio, Siri, and a tight iPhone connection rather than an AR screen. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports Apple is aiming for a late-2027 launch, possibly unveiled at WWDC 2027 with privacy pitched as the differentiator. A pricier Apple glasses with an actual AR display reportedly won't arrive until 2029 at the earliest.
That timing puts Apple roughly three years behind Meta, which already sells camera-and-audio glasses starting at $299 and has spent that head start getting people used to talking to their glasses instead of their phone. Apple isn't arriving with a screen or a new hardware category - it's arriving with the same feature set everyone else already ships, betting on ecosystem lock-in and, per the rumors, a privacy pitch to close the gap.
Counterpoint's growth numbers describe an industry trend, not a scoreboard Apple currently tops - the company is entering a race Meta has already been running for a while.