At Meta’s software developers conference in Menlo Park., Calif., this week, Mark Zuckerberg strutted onto the stage to show off a new gadget: a pair of glasses with cameras and a tiny screen projected into the corner of the frame.
The presentation was similar in ambition to product unveilings of Macs, iPhones and iPads when Steve Jobs ran Apple. Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, laid out his vision for how computerized glasses would become the future of personal computing. The new glasses, the $800 Meta Ray-Ban Display, which runs apps similar to a smartphone, were supposed to show that Meta was light years ahead of the competition. But it failed its first public demonstration. And then another.
Unlike the “big tent” moments that Mr. Jobs oversaw for years as the ringmaster of Apple’s product demonstrations, Mr. Zuckerberg drew more snickers than applause. He became a meme on social media, and tech news sites mocked his glitch-filled performance.
The product’s snafus, including a video call failing onstage, were effectively a dismantling of an image that Meta’s marketing team had carefully crafted for Mr. Zuckerberg over the last few years. In press interviews featuring Meta’s top brass and its glasses, along with online videos posted by influencers showing off the product, it would appear as though Meta was on the cusp of something big enough to dethrone industry titans like Apple and Samsung to become the next leader in computing hardware.
But realistically, it’s nowhere close. The company’s smart glasses remain a niche. As of February, Meta had sold about two million of its $300 Ray-Ban Meta camera glasses since their 2023 debut, and it hopes to sell 10 million annually by the end of 2026, which is a tiny amount for a company this size. In the last decade, Meta has spent over $100 billion on its virtual and augmented reality division, which includes its smart glasses and is not profitable. Last quarter, the division reported a $4.5 billion loss, nearly the same as a year ago.
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The post Seeing Through the Reality of Meta’s Smart Glasses appeared first on New York Times.
