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Apple continues to develop its own smart glasses, as the company looks to fend off Meta’s success in the area with a competing product of its own. The Apple smart glasses – reportedly codenamed N50 – remain in development with the aim of bringing Apple Intelligence to your face.
While details of products in development from Apple are often scarce, Mark Gurman at Bloomberg has a great reputation for rooting out this information, telling us that Apple continues to be interested in developing its own smart glasses.
Unfortunately, a marketable product remains some way off, with Gurman saying: “This device isn’t close to being ready yet, but the idea is to turn glasses into an Apple Intelligence device.”
With Apple’s AI features coming together under the banner of Apple Intelligence, channeling those skills into Apple smart glasses makes perfect sense. “The product will analyze the surrounding environment and feed information to the wearer, though it will stop well short of true augmented reality,” says Gurman.
It’s likely that Apple will turn this information into navigation directions, give access to Siri and provide to access wider sources of information, like transit routes and times, so those things are accessible without the need to get your phone out of your pocket.
That makes Apple’s plans sound very much like Meta’s AI glasses built in partnership with Ray-Ban. That’s a good target too, as of all the smart glasses out there, Meta’s Ray-Bans are the model that seems to have found favor. Meta’s glasses go heavy on style and a little lighter on the tech, but currently only offer an audio experience.
Meta is said to be targeting a 2025 launch for a new model that incorporates a display, which could continue to cast shade on Apple’s efforts in this area.
But if we know anything about Apple, it’s that being first to market isn’t its top priority. Apple has often taken its time to develop products before coming out with something that sets a new standard – and smart glasses are likely to be the same.
Apple’s interest in augmented reality is well established. It has poured a lot into Apple Vision Pro, with rumors that a lower-cost version could be launched around the same time as the iPhone 17 in fall 2025.
While smart glasses and augmented reality remain two separate entities, it’s not hard to imagine Apple taking things from Vision Pro into the smart glasses experience, such as gesture navigation.
For now, however, it seems like Meta is the brand to watch for next-gen smart glasses, with Apple not expected to launch its own smart glasses in the near future, with a 2027 date currently expected.
Chris has been writing about consumer tech for over 15 years. Formerly the Editor-in-Chief of Pocket-lint, he’s covered just…
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