Meta and EssilorLuxottica sold more than 7 million smart glasses in 2025, and they were the “dominant driver” of the Ray-Ban owner’s wholesale growth in H2.
Exactly one year ago, EssilorLuxottica told its investors that the Ray-Ban Meta glasses had sold 2 million units so far, a period spanning from the launch in October 2023 until February 2025.
Now, during its Q4 2025 earnings report, the company announced that it sold 7 million units of Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses in 2025 alone – meaning more than triple that of 2024. This suggests that around 9 million have been sold to date since the launch of Ray-Ban Meta two and a half years ago.
For comparison, Quest 2 sold an estimated 20 million units in two and a half years, while Steam Deck sold around 4 million units over the same timespan.
EssilorLuxottica says smart glasses drove significant growth for both its wholesale and retail business, describing the former in North America as “exponential”.
What Is EssilorLuxottica?
The French-Italian giant EssilorLuxottica is the largest eyewear company in the world by far. It owns iconic brands like Ray-Ban, Oakley, Oliver Peoples, and Persol, and has exclusive licenses with major fashion companies like Prada, Armani, Burberry, and Chanel. It also owns Sunglass Hut, and has almost 18,000 retail stores in total worldwide.
Meta has so far partnered with EssilorLuxottica for six smart glasses products:
The sales figure comes one month after Bloomberg reported that Meta and EssilorLuxottica were discussing doubling or even tripling smart glasses production capacity.
When announcing the 2 million sales mark a year ago, EssilorLuxottica told investors that it planned to increase annual production capacity to 10 million units by the end of 2026, citing the “great success” of the product. Bloomberg’s report suggests that target is being increased to 20 or 30 million.
It’s undeniable at this point that smart glasses are an appealing consumer product. The question now is whether Meta will maintain its lead once serious competition from Apple and Google arrives.
Google has repeatedly teased smart glasses with a HUD at events like TED and I/O, and announced last year that it’s working with the eyewear companies Gentle Monster and Warby Parker on Gemini smart glasses, and will work with Kering Eyewear in the future. Multiple South Korean news outlets have reported that Samsung plans to launch a Meta Ray-Ban Display competitor this year, powered by Google software, a similar strategy to the Galaxy XR headset.
Meanwhile, in October Bloomberg reported that Apple moved staff off the cheaper and lighter Vision headset project to prioritize shipping smart glasses sooner. Apple’s first glasses could be revealed as soon as this year ahead of a release in 2027, the report claimed.
This article was originally published on uploadvr.com
