Samsung says its upcoming smart glasses, expected later this year, will feature a camera positioned at eye level and connect to a smartphone that processes visual information, reflecting a broader push by technology companies to turn artificial intelligence into a constant, wearable assistant that can understand what users are seeing and respond in real time, as firms from Meta to Google and Qualcomm experiment with devices that could shift everyday computing away from phones and screens toward lighter eyewear capable of supporting emerging AI agents that perform tasks, answer questions and interact with the physical world
Samsung plans to enter the fast growing market for AI-powered smart glasses this year, joining a race among technology companies to build devices that could one day replace or complement the smartphone.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Jay Kim, executive vice president in Samsung’s mobile business, offered the first public details about the company’s upcoming eyewear.
Kim told CNBC that the smart glasses will feature a built in camera positioned at “your eye level” and will connect to a smartphone that processes information captured by the device.
The product will be Samsung’s first entry into the smart glasses category, a space currently led by Meta Platforms, whose Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses hold about 82 percent of the global market, according to Counterpoint Research. Competitors including Alibaba, Xreal and Samsung are now trying to challenge the social media giant.
Samsung has been working with Qualcomm and Google since 2023 to develop the operating system, semiconductors and hardware needed for mixed reality devices. Mixed reality refers to technologies that combine augmented and virtual reality, often layering digital images over the physical world.
The partnership previously produced the Samsung Galaxy XR Headset, which went on sale last year and runs on Android XR, Google’s operating system for virtual, mixed and augmented reality devices.
Companies across the technology industry see smart glasses as potentially more appealing to consumers than larger headsets because they are lighter and resemble traditional eyewear.
“I think the XR on headset will sort of be around. But not as a sort of mass scale business,” Kim said.
“Everybody talks about what’s the next AI device is, and I know I’ve been looking at many different types of devices. Glasses, obviously is one of them and everybody’s looking at it.”
The push toward smart glasses has accelerated as more powerful artificial intelligence systems, including Google Gemini and ChatGPT, have emerged. Technology companies are exploring new ways for users to interact with these systems beyond typing into an app, including speaking to voice assistants embedded in wearable devices.
Kim said the camera built into the glasses could help artificial intelligence understand what a user is looking at, allowing the system to provide information in real time.
Kim added that the “important thing” was for AI to understand “where you’re looking at” so it can “feed the information to the mobile phone and then it processes and actually gives you a lot of information.”
He declined to say whether the glasses would include a built in display but noted that Samsung already offers other screens through products such as smartphones and smartwatches.
Kim said the company’s goal was “to have something for industry this year.”
Earlier this week, Cristiano Amon, the chief executive of Qualcomm, also said the glasses would be released this year and described the category as a promising new computing platform.
“Agentic” refers to AI applications that can carry out tasks on users’ behalf autonomously. Device makers have increasingly described a future in which people might ask an AI system to perform tasks such as calling a taxi or booking a hotel.
Amon said the shift toward wearable devices could eventually move some everyday computing tasks away from smartphones and laptops.
He compared the current state of smart glasses to the early days of smartphones, when the number of apps was limited.
“But then you go to 200 apps, 1,000 apps, and that’s how we’re going to see those glasses getting better over time as new agents get developed,” Amon said.
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