Why ‘Open Platform’ Is the Next Big Frontier for Smart Glasses

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This morning, upstart smart glasses company Even Realities launched Even Hub, an open app store and developer platform for its G2 line of display style smart glasses. This could be the first salvo in a war between open- and closed-platform display smart glasses.

On one side is Meta. The Goliath of the smart glasses market has thus far taken a completely closed approached to its newish Display glasses: Meta decides what your smart glasses can do and determines what apps you can access. The David to Meta's Goliath is Even Realities, a boutique tech company that just launched a storefront with over 50 apps made by third-party developers, so users can decide for themselves what to install and what to ignore.

Meta Ray-Ban Display

$799.00 at Best Buy

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$799.00 at Best Buy

While the market for AR-style smart glasses with displays is currently limited to tech heads and early adopters, if the HUD-style glasses catch on (and both companies maintain their current strategies) the winner could determine how much control users will have over their augmented futures.

Competing strategies for display-style smart glasses

In terms of total market share, Meta and Even Realities aren't in the same universe. Meta's market capitalization is approximately $1.47 trillion, and its line of Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses make up about 82% of the smart glasses market. Even Realities is worth an estimated $10 million and its $3.3 million in annual revenue is less than one percent of the total smart glasses market. But within the niche of display-integrated glasses, the two companies are peers: estimates for 2025-2026 suggest that Meta has sold around 20,000 of its high end, Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, while Even Realities profits suggest the company has moved between 10,000 and 25,000 pairs of its G2 glasses.

Even Realities G2

$599.00 at Even Realities

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$599.00 at Even Realities

The two companies are taking very different approaches to selling "glasses with a HUD." Meta's Display spectacles are priced at $799, and designed to do everything its popular non-display glasses do, with the addition of a full-color, high quality video, and a distinctive, Ray-Ban look. Even Realities' $599 G2 glasses don't have an onboard camera or audio, and the mono-color display is housed in a very discreet frame that no one will suspect is anything but a "normal" pair of specs. They're designed to be fashionable, functional, everyday glasses that can also project a map in front of your eyes or help you con bartenders when you need them to. Here's a review of the last generation of Even Realities glasses for more info.

The most important divide between these companies might prove to be their approach to software. All technology is on a continuum between "open" and "closed," and Meta's smart glasses have, so far, been far into the restricted part of the spectrum. You get a highly curated experience, with Meta acting as the arbiter of what is installed on your face computer, whether you're rocking Display glasses or Ray-Ban Metas. You don't download apps, you toggle "experiences" on and off. You can choose to disable or enable Apple Music, but you can't choose to listen to music on a new platform developed by a third party. You can't delete core features you don't want. Even something as basic as changing the wake-up words for the AI is off-limits; it's "Hey, Meta," or it's nothing.

Even Realities approach is semi-open, like Apple's App store. It's not the "anything goes" approach of Linux, but you can peruse Even Realities' library of approved apps and choose whether or not you need an in-glasses EPUB Reader, a Chess game, or a charge indicator for your Tesla. Even Realities lets you remove even core features you don't use on its glasses too.

Speculating about Meta's future smart glasses plans

It's worth noting that Meta isn't fundamentally opposed to third-party development. The company's Meta Horizon Store for the Quest line of VR headsets is a massive, vibrant marketplace with everything from high-end games to tiny, janky tools on offer, and the company shut down much of its first-party VR development, while pledging to continue supporting indie devs. So it's possible/probable that Meta is waiting for the hardware to mature before opening a more open store for its glasses, or just adding a "Display" section to the existing Horizon Store.

Open isn't necessarily better

While the knee-jerk reaction might be to conclude that the choice offered by an open system is more desirable than a closed one, that hasn't always been the case in the tech world. Nintendo dominated video games in the 1980s by maintaining strict quality controls over games released on its NES, and few kids wanted the more "open" competing systems. Adobe's Flash dominated everything the "open web" had to offer in the early 2000s, only dying when another relatively closed system, Apple's iPhone, refused to support it. Speaking of Apple, its iOS devices account for 63% of the American smart phone market, while the nearest competitor, the more open Android, is perpetually second. Time, as they say, will tell whether consumers prefer a curated experience, a modular, open one, or even want glasses with a HUD at all.

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