• The accumulated shipments of the Ray-Ban Meta have crossed the 1-million mark.
• The total production cost of the base edition of the Ray-Ban Meta collection is nearly $135.
• The Ray-Ban Meta’s success is inspiring the industry to give more attention to lightweight smart glasses.

The accumulated shipments of the Ray-Ban Meta have crossed the 1-million mark, making it the most successful display-less smart glasses to date, according to Counterpoint Research’s smart glasses shipment forecasts.

The development of the smart glasses market has been constrained by limited functionalities, uncomfortable wearing experience, unfriendly interaction and low battery life. The Ray-Ban Meta aims to address these issues, giving a new direction to the still-maturing smart glass technological ecosystem.

The Ray-Ban Meta is the first smart glasses powered by the Qualcomm AR1 Gen 1, the smart glasses-oriented platform that features the third-generation Hexagon NPU and delivers a fast wireless connection with support for both Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth v5.3. Although the adoption of the AR1 Gen 1 means relatively more power consumption compared to an MCU-built system, the optimized computing elements and smooth connectivity allow the lightweight gadget to access ever-growing capabilities from the Meta AI. For instance, it can reply to questions, offer real-time translation, capture videos and analyze images, transforming the glasses into a smart digital assistant.

To increase battery life, the powerful chipset has been paired with an NXP MCU (MIMXRT685SF). It can independently process the sensing data and collect voice accurately. Besides, there is a 160mAh Desay battery inside the temple and a 3034mAh SCUD battery in the charging case.

The Ray-Ban Meta has been equipped with dual custom-built speakers for enhanced bass effect and volume. Compared to other smart glasses, its performance is impressive. The device also has 32GB onboard storage, 12MP RGB camera and a five-microphone array.

According to Counterpoint Research’s BoM Analysis Service, the total production cost of the Ray-Ban Meta base edition, which retails at $299, is nearly $135, representing a gross margin of 46.5% for EssilorLuxottica and Meta. The Qualcomm AR1 Gen 1, mechanical parts and batteries account for 37.7%, 13.9% and 5.6% of the total manufacturing cost respectively.

BoM Structure of Ray-Ban Meta Glasses and Charging Case

Despite the absence of a display, which usually has a significant share in the BoM cost, the Ray-Ban Meta enables friendly interactive experiences thanks to the Meta AI. With the Meta AI itself continuing to evolve, the Ray-Ban Meta is expected to become even more useful in our daily lives. Another benefit is the lightweight form factor (49 grams), which makes it comfortable to wear, even for outdoor activities.

The Ray-Ban Meta’s success is inspiring the industry to give more attention to developing lightweight smart glasses while leveraging the on-device and cloud AI to provide interactive services. The industry has managed to further bring the weight down to below 40 grams and also achieved a reasonable manufacturing cost and retail price like the Ray-Ban Meta, which is quite acceptable to people getting used to wearing such glasses. There are reasons to believe this type of design will gradually become a key segment of smart wearables. We also expect more AR and smart glass designs will be powered by Qualcomm’s AR platforms, leveraging the growing AI capability to enable richer use cases.