If Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse hasn’t – yet? – met with faded success, Meta and Ray-Ban are rubbing their hands with their partnership. Ray-Ban Meta “smart” glasses are the best-selling product in 60% of Ray-Ban stores worldwide. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa, success is becoming clearer for Ray-Ban glasses revisited by Meta, as Upload VR explains. The specialized site holds the information from the financial director of EssilorLuxottica, Stefano Grassi, who raised the subject during a conference on the results of the third quarter of 2024.
A bigger success than Meta had anticipated
The excellent start of Ray-Ban Meta is a surprise, even for the social media giant. The latter did not necessarily expect such success, especially after the failure of Ray-Ban Stories. This fruitful collaboration between Meta and EssilorLuxottica tends to demonstrate that there is a certain expectation around products combining style and technology.
“(The) Ray-Ban Meta, we are very satisfied with the performance that we have observed. I mean, it’s an overall success that we’re seeing.”explains the manager. He adds: “Just to give you an idea, it’s not just a success in the United States, where it’s obvious. But it is also a success here in Europe. To give you an idea, in 60% of Ray-Ban stores in Europe, EMEA, Ray-Ban Meta is the best seller in those stores. So it’s something extremely gratifying.”.
This success comes as Meta does not yet offer all the AI functions for its glasses in Europe. Our Brits have voice support, but Meta has not provided a date for the arrival of the full multimodal capabilities of the glasses. In July, Axios even indicated that the company did not intend to use or distribute its multimodal models in Europe. Meta cites a lack of clarity on the part of EU regulators and places the blame on the Old Continent.
Meta wants to get ahead of its future rivals
This lack of AI features in the region does not appear to be hampering Ray-Ban Meta sales. A nice revenge for the American giant, even if there is still a long way to go before making AR glasses essential. For its part, Meta believes in it more than ever and regularly adds new features to its connected glasses. The company also took advantage of the good debut of Ray-Ban Meta to announce, in mid-September, a long-term partnership with EssilorLuxottica. Both companies say they want “write the destiny of “wearables” together”.
Faced with Meta’s ambitions, Google and Samsung decided to come together to develop their own model. The two giants benefit from the support of Qualcomm, very involved in the design of this connected glasses. Rumors also mention an interest from Apple and a possible arrival of the Apple brand on this market in 2027.
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