Silicon Valley Is Betting the Next Big Device Won’t Be a Phone

Silicon Valley loves to tell itself that it saw the future clearly, worked diligently toward it, and was just misinterpreted by the present. The purest example of this mythology is likely Google Glass. Those odd, angular frames with a tiny prism of a screen were introduced in 2013 with great fanfare, and they quickly became a cultural joke.

The wearers were referred to as “Glassholes.” They were prohibited in restaurants. In 2015, the product quietly passed away. You would be hard-pressed to find a significant technology company that isn’t, in one way or another, developing the exact same thing more than ten years later.

It doesn’t feel nostalgic to pursue smart glasses again. It seems more like a deliberate re-entry, the kind that occurs when a sector begins to realize that there isn’t much space for its most popular product to expand. It is difficult to ignore the plateau that smartphones have reached. Previously lasting roughly two years, upgrade cycles are now closer to four.

You can only add a certain number of camera lenses and screen refresh rates before people lose interest. The industry has been looking for an exit ramp because it is aware of this. The exit ramp currently resembles a pair of glasses.

Artificial intelligence is what’s different this time, and it really does seem different. In essence, the original Google Glass was a small screen that was affixed to your head. It was not really capable of thinking, but it could take pictures and show notifications. Smart glasses of the latest generation can. Since their 2023 release, Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses have sold more than two million pairs, enabling users to ask whether a pepper in a grocery store is spicy by pointing their eyes at it.

The glasses will respond. They have real-time language translation capabilities. The market for smart glasses is expected to grow from 3.3 million units shipped in 2024 to nearly 13 or 14 million by 2026, according to researchers at IDC and ABI Research. This time, the numbers make sense because of AI.

Recently, Snap revealed that it is developing AI-enabled eyewear that will be available in 2026 and is dubbed “Specs.” The company’s announcement had an almost philosophical tone, implying that by making people look down at a glowing rectangle rather than outward at the world, smartphones have reduced human imagination.

Even though it’s also a practical marketing strategy for a business that desperately needs a new product, it’s a fair criticism. Bloomberg reports that Apple is creating its own smart glasses that will be available next year. Alexa glasses with cameras have not been ruled out by Amazon.

Qualcomm, whose chips are found in gadgets from Samsung to Meta to Motorola, recently introduced the Snapdragon Wear Elite, a new chip made especially for a new class of ambient wearables, such as glasses, pendants, and pins, indicating that the supply chain is already rearranging itself around this wager.

The language used in the industry has changed, and it’s difficult to ignore. Executives referred to wearables as “companion devices” a few years ago, meaning they functioned in tandem with your phone. Now, in federal antitrust testimony, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that he thinks smart glasses could become a key component of how people use technology.

“Eventually through smart glasses and holograms,” he stated. From the man currently in charge of the only business with a significant market share for smart glasses, that is a pretty direct statement.

Examining Google Glass’s past is a helpful way to comprehend both its advantages and disadvantages. The screen was too tiny. The battery barely lasted a day. Crucially, the glasses had an odd appearance; they were noticeable enough to make others uncomfortable and self-conscious enough to make wearers defensive.

Because a pair of glasses with a camera is fundamentally different from a phone you hold up and point, privacy concerns followed almost immediately. The recording process is visible when using a phone. It’s not with glasses.

That discomfort never truly subsided, and it’s already coming back. Men wearing Meta’s Ray-Bans have allegedly recorded some women without their knowledge or consent. In response, Meta pointed out that the glasses have an LED indicator light that turns on while the video is being recorded. It’s genuinely unclear if that’s adequate, and the industry hasn’t provided a complete response.

The fundamental question of whether enough people will genuinely want to spend money on this is another. The price of Meta’s glasses is approximately $300, which is comparable to the cost of a good smartwatch. That price isn’t excessive, but it’s also not insignificant, particularly in light of the recent decline in smartwatch shipments worldwide for the first time since the category’s inception. It appears that consumers are quietly reevaluating which gadgets are worthwhile purchases and which are unnecessary.

A new device that essentially replicates the functions of your phone is unlikely to make it through that reevaluation. But a device that does something your phone genuinely cannot — translating a conversation in real time without making you look at a screen, helping you navigate a room without breaking eye contact with the person you’re speaking to — might.

Ziad Asghar of Qualcomm raised an important point. In comparison to the previous year, shipments of smart glasses increased by 139 percent in the second half of 2025. Even Qualcomm, which had developed forecasts that proved to be overly conservative, was taken aback by that figure. A technology trend that surpasses expectations is not the same as one that analysts predict. This one was overshot.

This does not imply that the category is assured. The wearable gadget created by former Apple executives and supported by a lot of investor enthusiasm, Humane’s AI Pin, failed to find a market and ultimately sold portions of the company to HP. There is a significant and actual difference between a functional product and one that consumers wish to incorporate into their everyday lives.

Nevertheless, there’s a sense that the timing is actually better now as you watch this whole thing play out. Three or five years ago, it was impossible for the AI models operating on these glasses to process speech, images, and video all at once.

The chips are more power-efficient and compact. Additionally, a gap that did not exist during the Google Glass era may have been created by the cultural moment—a growing discomfort with the amount of time people spend staring at phones. People are more open to thinking about other options. The next two or three years will determine whether those options end up on their faces.