After a lot of speculation, Meta has finally announced the arrival of new smart glasses. These will be unveiled on June 20 and the company has partnered with sports performance equipment manufacturing company Oakley for this new product. These new smart glasses are said to adopt the design language of the popular Oakley Sphaera multi-sport sunglasses. These are likely to be positioned for athletes and sports enthusiasts. Meta has earlier partnered with Ray-Ban for smart glasses, and those are universally designed for all use cases.
Meta and Oakley took the Instagram to announce the arrival of the new smart glasses on June 20. The teaser gives very little clue about the design, features, pricing, or availability of the new smart glasses. There is no clarity on whether these smart glasses will go on sale in the Indian market or not.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman had earlier reported of this development, claiming that Meta was looking to broaden its smart glasses technology to other fashion brands owned by partner Luxottica Group SA. These Meta x Oakley smart glasses are said to be dubbed internally as ‘Supernova 2’ and it will see a different camera placement than the Ray Ban Meta smart glasses.
The Ray Ban variant had the cameras on the side, but this model is likely to place it in the centre of the glass frame to allow a better field-of-view for athletes and cyclists. Other features remain under wraps for now, with both the companies call it the ‘the next evolution’.
An Instagram account called Oakley Meta has been created just for this upcoming announcement. The adoption of smart glasses and wearable devices is said to continually grow in the coming years with analysts forecasting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 29.4 percent in the coming years.
