Samsung’s exhibition stand features the prominent slogan “A new era of mobile agent AI” by the South Korean company Samsung Electronics.
Joanne Crosnull Photo | Getty Images
Samsung’s next smart glasses will include a camera and connect to smartphones, an executive told CNBC. That’s because the tech giant is preparing to make its first foray into the product category.
Jay Kim, Samsung’s executive vice president of mobile business, revealed details about the smart glasses for the first time on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona.
Kim told CNBC that the smart glasses will have a built-in camera “at eye level.” The glasses connect to your smartphone, allowing the handset to process information received from the camera.
According to Counterpoint Research, Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses dominate the smart glasses market with an 82% global share. But other players are also looking to challenge the US social media giant, from Alibaba to Exreal to now Samsung.
Samsung is working with chip designers Qualcomm Starting in 2023, Google will design its operating systems, semiconductors, and hardware around so-called mixed reality technology. The term refers to a combination of augmented reality and virtual reality, which often involves digital images applied over the real world.
The partnership’s first product was the Galaxy XR headset, which launched last year and was based on Google’s Android “XR” (VR and mixed reality, augmented reality) operating system. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told CNBC in 2024 that smart glasses are the ultimate goal.
Companies see smart glasses as potentially having greater appeal than other XR products because they are small and the glasses are already widely worn.
“I think XR in headsets is going to be kind of a thing, but not as kind of a big business,” Kim said.
“Everyone is talking about what the next AI device will be, and I think we’ve been looking at many different types of devices. Glasses are obviously one of them, and everyone is looking at that.”
The push towards smart glasses is accelerating with the development of more advanced AI applications such as Google Gemini and ChatGPT.
Device makers are figuring out how users can interact with these services in addition to typing into an app on another device, such as by talking to the glasses’ AI assistant or putting the glasses’ camera into AI input mode.
Kim added that the “important thing” is that the AI can understand “where the user is looking” and “send information to the phone and process it and actually provide more information.”
Kim declined to say whether the glasses had a built-in display, but said Samsung also has other products, such as smartwatches and mobile phones, in case users need a display.
Kim said Samsung’s goal is to “offer something for the industry this year.”
Qualcomm’s Amon told CNBC earlier this week that smart glasses are expected to launch this year.
Amon also explained why he was “bullish” on smart glasses, saying they are “closer to your eyes, closer to your ears, closer to your mouth, so you end up with an agent-like experience and workload.”
“Agent” refers to an AI application that can autonomously perform tasks on behalf of a user. Device makers are talking about a world in which users might be able to have AI agents hail taxis or book hotels for them.
Things that users once did on their phones and laptops will migrate to other devices, such as smart glasses, Amon said.
He likened the current state of smart glasses to the early days of smartphones, when there were far fewer apps available.
“But then as you get to 200, 1,000 apps, you start to see these glasses get better over time as new agents are developed,” Amon said.
