If 2023 is considered the year of the AI large model explosion, then 2024 is the year when intelligent products combining AI with hardware have taken off. This includes AI smartphones, AI PCs, AI watches, AI rings, and among them, the AI glasses have been the most impacted.

According to multiple media reports, despite the Vision Pro's sales not meeting expectations, Apple is still developing a new series of products, including an AI glasses similar to Ray Ban Meta. At the same time, several AI glasses have been released in the market, including those from Huawei, Xiaomi, Rokid, and others, which have provided more opportunities for domestic chip companies to participate.

Apple's entry into the AI glasses market has led to a recent flurry of similar product launches.

Wearable devices combined with AI seem to be increasingly becoming a trend of the moment. According to IDC data, the shipment of wearable devices in 2024 is expected to reach 559.7 million units, a year-on-year increase of 10.5%. Among them, smart glasses have the fastest growth, with a shipment increase of 128.2% in 2023, while smart rings and smartwatches grew by 34% and 8.7% respectively.

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It is worth noting that although there is now a rich variety of AI wearable devices, for consumers, the practicality of most AI wearable devices is questionable. For example, a wearable device called AI Pin launched by Humane, a startup founded by former Apple employees, claimed to want to replace smartphones at its launch, but this year it is facing a large number of returns.

In addition, some smart rings, pocket AI devices, and other products have begun to be questioned by the market. The reason is that consumers already have smartphones and smartwatches, so these smart wearable devices are just repeating the functions of existing devices. So why should they spend more money to buy such a product?

However, AI glasses have taken a different path. For example, the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which were launched in September 2023 in cooperation with Meta and Ray-Ban, have sold more than 1 million pairs in the three quarters to date, and the annual shipment is expected to reach 1.5 million pairs.

In contrast, the global sales of AR glasses in 2023 were only about 500,000 units, and even Apple's Vision Pro is expected to sell only 500,000 units in 2024, which shows the gold content of AI glasses.

At the same time, AR glasses currently have the impossible triangle of performance, portability, and cost, while AI smart glasses, as wearable devices, bring epoch-making high efficiency to consumers at a low cost, which is recognized by the industry as the most cost-effective hardware landing solution for AI.

The main reasons why AI glasses are favored by the market environment are threefold: one is the low price, such as Ray-Ban Meta, which is priced at only $299 (about 2137 RMB), the second is the ability to take photos and experience real-time translation at any time, and the third is the support of AI, which can provide more personalized services for users.Perhaps recognizing the immense potential of AI glasses, several manufacturers have begun to introduce their own AI eyewear products. For instance, Huawei has launched the Huawei Smart Glasses 2 Square Sunglasses, and in April, Xiaomi's Mijia Smart Audio Glasses Enjoy Edition officially went on sale. Rokid has also unveiled its new generation AR Lite spatial computing suite, and Hive Technology recently publicly released the Boundary AI Audio Glasses.

Apple, under the spotlight of various media reports, has hinted that its internal team is currently experimenting with smart glasses without a display screen, similar to the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. Users of this product primarily interact through its built-in camera and a voice assistant powered by AI models.

AI Smart Glasses Bring New Opportunities for Chip Companies

As a wearable device that integrates advanced technology and multiple functions, AI smart glasses will not only incorporate various AI models but also require a variety of different chips to support their complex functionalities.

From a product perspective, the most crucial chip in AI smart glasses is the processor. For example, the Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 is a processor specifically designed for smart glasses. It has been optimized for power consumption and heat dissipation, capable of supporting functions such as shooting, sharing, or live streaming from the side of the glasses, and Ray-Ban Meta also uses the Snapdragon AR1.

Due to the inherent limitations of AI smart glasses, all related chips need not only to be smaller in size but also to ensure low power consumption, high integration, and lightweight design.

In terms of storage chips, recently, Biwin Storage publicly stated that it has provided ROM+RAM storage chip solutions for Meta's smart glasses Ray-Ban Meta, indicating the company's capability to offer storage solutions suitable for smart glasses.

Sensors are also an important part of AI smart glasses. For example, adjusting the volume of the glasses through touch, sensing the wearing status of the glasses through proximity sensors, and detecting motion and posture through accelerometers. Domestically, the sensor field is relatively mature, with companies such as Silan Microelectronics, Naxin Microelectronics, China Resources Microelectronics, and Goertek Acoustics, all of which can participate in the AI smart glasses market.

With the addition of AI interaction, voice functionality is given more importance, including voice recognition chips, audio power amplifiers, and audio codecs, which will become standard configurations.

In addition to the aforementioned chip products, there are also charging chips, lithium battery protection chips, overvoltage and overcurrent protection chips, CMOS, LDO, MOSFET, etc. The rise of AI smart glasses is expected to bring more market opportunities for these chip products.According to Statista data, the global eyewear market size in 2023 is $184.09 billion, close to the smartphone market size of $232 billion in 2012, with annual sales of just sunglasses reaching about 850 million pairs worldwide. Some institutions predict that with the continuous iteration of AI smart glasses, they will become a part of daily life for people with vision correction issues. This means that the AI smart glasses market is expected to grow into a trillion-dollar market in the future, bringing huge market dividends to related enterprises both domestically and internationally.

Summary

Now, with the increase in AI smart glasses and the entry of many manufacturers from home and abroad, it is expected to create a huge market comparable to TWS earphones. The market is still in its infancy, but with the release of future blockbuster products and the increase in market attention, it will also bring great opportunities to the domestic industry chain and is expected to bring greater profits to related enterprises.