LIFESTYLE

CREDIT: RAY-BAN

Its Ray-Ban glasses, built with the eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica, more than tripled sales in 2025 to over seven million pairs, enough that Meta is weighing a doubling of output, while its US $ 800 display model outran supply on launch. TrendForce expects the market for AR glasses to ship close to a million units this year. Apple, for its part, is defending the old world in court, suing OpenAI over the ex-employees, more than 400 of them, it says walked out with its playbook. The engineering matters, but less than you would think.

Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses sold in 2025, more than tripling the prior run-rate

“ They’ re being forced to build hardware because it gives them more control over the user experience,” says Anshel Sag of Moor Insights & Strategy. Whoever wins will win on feel, the one spec that never makes it onto the spec sheet. Not every answer to the smartphone is a screenless companion or a pair of glasses. Some are the phone, rebuilt around feel and belief.

In July, 500 people travelled across Europe to queue in a Helsinki square for the new Jolla Phone, the continent’ s only handset running its own operating system, 13 years after the same crowd queued in the same spot for the first one. The Finnish maker, bootstrapped and cashflow-positive without a cent of venture money, has taken more than 15,000 preorders on word of mouth alone. What they queued for was design as identity, snap-on“ Other Half” covers that change the

118 September 2026