For years the question hanging over AR glasses has been simple: is anyone actually buying them? We now have a firmer answer, and it’s a qualified yes.
Market research firm TrendForce published its latest forecast on October 15. It expects global AR glasses shipments to reach 1.31 million units in 2026, up from 620,000 last year. That’s growth of around 111%, more than doubling in a single year, and TrendForce expects nearly 80% more growth in 2027.
In its words, AR glasses are “gradually transitioning from proof-of-concept products to the consumer market.” Having watched this category talk about its own future for a long time, we think that line is the most important one in the report.
Meta pulled everyone else forward
Meta is the headline name. TrendForce expects it to take about 20% of global shipments this year and stay in front, and it credits Meta’s Ray-Ban Display glasses with growth that came in stronger than expected.
The more interesting point is what that did to everyone else. According to the report, Meta’s success raised consumer interest across the whole category and pushed rival brands to speed up their own development. Other makers are expanding their ranges and sales channels to catch the spillover. When the biggest player in the room proves the demand is real, the rest of the market stops waiting for permission.
The challengers hold more than half the market
If Meta has the biggest single share, the bigger story may be the group behind it. TrendForce puts XREAL, Even Realities, Rokid and RayNeo at a combined 53.2% of shipments, more than half the market across four brands, most of them Chinese.
They aren’t all chasing the same customer. XREAL leans into entertainment and media, with its Aura glasses, built with Google, due before the end of the year. Even Realities focuses on lightweight, good-looking glasses that display information. Rokid and RayNeo split their ranges across different uses. That variety is a healthy sign: the market is starting to divide by what people actually want glasses for, not just by who can build one.
The display question underneath it all
For the technically minded, the report also shows where the hardware is heading. TrendForce expects two display types, OLEDoS and LEDoS, to make up roughly 80% of the market. Both are tiny, very bright screens built directly onto a silicon chip. OLEDoS has a slight lead, mostly thanks to entertainment glasses. LEDoS is the key technology for information-display glasses, but full-colour LEDoS is still a hard technical problem, and suppliers are working on two-colour red-and-green versions in the meantime. Meta’s products are also boosting a third approach, LCoS.
In plain terms, nobody has yet cracked a full-colour display that’s bright and efficient enough to disappear into an ordinary pair of frames. Whoever does will have a real advantage.
Our take
Some perspective is worth keeping. 1.31 million units is a tiny number next to the billion-plus smartphones sold every year. AR glasses are still a niche, and a forecast is not a sales figure.
But it lines up with the other signals we’ve covered this month. Micron wrote AR glasses into its annual report for the first time. A major shipping safety body published formal guidance on using AR at work. Now an independent research firm says the category is about to double. Taken separately, each is a modest data point. Together they point the same way.
We don’t think this is AR’s iPhone moment yet. It does look like the year the category stopped being a demo and started being a market.