Why Your Next Glasses Will Be Your Smartest Device Yet
By Harrison Gross, CEO, Innovative Eyewear Inc.
A model wearing Reebok Powered by Lucyd smart eyewear. Image courtesy of Innovative Eyewear, Inc.
A Revolution on Your Face
Once a static accessory for vision correction, eyewear is morphing into a bold new frontier of personal technology. Just as wristwatches evolved into powerful smartwatches, smart glasses are poised to transform how we connect, consume information, and compute. We’re witnessing the reinvention of eyewear—one sleek frame at a time.
Smart eyewear is no longer a novelty. It’s a booming category, with global shipments projected to surge from 826,000 units in 2023 to over 10 million annually by 2028.1 The reason is simple: smart glasses are fast becoming the most natural, intuitive interface for your smartphone—hands-free, screen-free, always-on.
This isn’t just a tech upgrade. It’s a tectonic shift in how we communicate and access AI.
From Passive Lenses to Powerful Interfaces
Forget your phone. The real action now happens at eye level.
📞 Calls Without the Hassle
Gone are the days of fumbling for your phone. With open-ear audio and precision mics, smart eyewear like the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses and Lucyd Lyte turn your glasses into a seamless speakerphone. Crystal-clear conversations, intuitive voice control, and total discretion—even in noisy environments—are now just a tap or voice command away.
Commuters, cyclists, multitaskers: rejoice. Your headphones and your glasses are together at last.
🎧 Audio That Moves with You
Want your soundtrack on the go—without zoning out from the world around you? Smart eyewear’s directional speakers deliver high-quality audio while keeping your ears open to your surroundings. Experience vision correction, safety and style without compromise.
With 500 million people streaming music daily and podcast listenership up 20% year-over-year,2 smart eyewear is stepping up as the go-to device for enjoying audio content on the move.
🤖 Talk to AI Like a Friend
Here’s where it gets magical. Today’s smart eyewear lets you interact hands-free with generative AI assistants like ChatGPT, Alexa, or Google Assistant. Want to set a reminder, send a text, or get an instant translation? Just say the word—no phone, no tapping, no looking down.
Lucyd’s first collection for industrial and logistics applications, Lucyd Armor®, is leading the way with always-on AI voice access and advanced noise-canceling mics in an ANSI-certified smart frame. Additionally Lucyd debuted a Walkie-talkie feature for use with their smart safety glasses. This isn’t just innovation—it’s liberation from screens and handheld devices.
Who’s Leading the Charge?
👓 Meta x Luxottica: Silicon Valley Meets High Fashion
Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses, now in their second generation, have redefined the category. With a sleek design, HD camera, real-time translation, and AI image recognition, these glasses blend style with cutting-edge function.3 It’s Meta’s boldest bid yet to anchor the next big hardware platform. In June 2025, Meta has just announced new Meta Oakley glasses designed for a sportier look, with improved cameras and battery life. This is similar to Lucyd’s strategy to introduce smart eyewear under multiple brands, which it has done under Lucyd, Nautica, Eddie Bauer and now Reebok. This points to the importance of style and fashion when it comes to any eyewear, even smart glasses—offering the customer comparable style selection to traditional eyewear is a major stepping stone to eliminating the cost of switching from standard to smart eyewear.
🔥 Lucyd: The Rising Star You Need to Know
A brand of Innovative Eyewear Inc. (Nasdaq: LUCY), Lucyd is emerging as one of the most versatile and accessible name in smart eyewear. Its unique mix of proprietary innovation and powerhouse brand collaborations makes it a standout in the space.
- Lucyd Lyte: Lightweight, affordable, everyday wear with Bluetooth audio and assistant access.
- Lucyd Armor: Rugged and refined—titanium frames, adaptive noise control, and a serious power boost.
- Reebok Powered by Lucyd: For the active lifestyle. Sport-ready, sweat-resistant, and performance-driven.
- Nautica Powered by Lucyd: Coastal cool meets smart tech. Casual listening in timeless frames.
- Eddie Bauer Powered by Lucyd: Built for the great outdoors, with smart features that go the distance.
This strategy—one tech platform, many fashion identities—gives Lucyd more selection than any of its competitors, so traditional optical and sunglasses customers can get smart versions of the styles they already wear. Fashion meets function without compromise, eliminating any cost of switching from standard to smart eyewear.
A Market Measured in Billions
Let’s talk numbers. More than 4 billion people worldwide wear corrective eyewear.4 Over 6.8 billion use smartphones.5 Smart eyewear sits at this perfect intersection—and the addressable market is enormous.
If even 10% of vision correction users adopt smart glasses, we’re looking at a $50+ billion annual hardware opportunity. And that’s before layering in recurring revenues from AI subscriptions, software services, and digital advertising.
This isn’t a niche. This is the next global platform, transforming and combining vision and mobile computing into one.
The Smartphone’s Successor?
Smartphones aren’t going away—but their dominance as our main digital portal is slipping. Smartwatches were a hint. Smart eyewear is the leap.
These glasses aren’t gadgets. They’re a new paradigm of mobile, IOT computing. A natural, non-intrusive bridge between our physical and digital lives.
As the category matures, one truth is becoming inescapable:
The future of mobile computing isn’t in your hand—it’s on your face.
SOURCES:
- Counterpoint Research Smart Wearables Forecast (2024)
- Statista, “Global Audio Streaming Usage,” (2024)
- Meta Connect Keynote 2023
- Vision Council of America, “Global Eyewear Trends,” (2023)
- GSMA Intelligence, Global Mobile Subscriber Report (2025)
- Meta, EssilorLuxottica unveil Oakley smart glasses, Published by CNBC Fri, Jun 20 202
