Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-04-25
Source: The Conversation – in French– By Julien Pillot, Teacher-Researcher in Economics, INSEEC Grande École
Connected glasses could well be the next terminal for many digital uses. While the smartphone market is slowing down, everything seems in place for rapid development and widespread adoption. Everything? Well, almost everything.
Imagine a typical morning, you leave your home and, with a simple blink of an eye, the world enriches itself with an invisible layer. The billboards whisper your name; the faces of passersby discreetly bear their professional profile; your schedule floats in the air before you like a benevolent ghost. Reality, suddenly, is enhanced with an entirely customizable overlay of information. And becomesipso facto“negotiable.”
That day, we will no longer look at the world: we will consult it. We will no longer meet a glance, we will analyze it. And it is precisely there, in that subtle shift between perception and information, that everything will change. For it will not only be our eyes that change their frames. It is our very humanity that will be enhanced… or perhaps, simply, laid bare.
Dystopian story for some, utopian for others, it depicts a reality that could happen much sooner than you think. Because behind the scenes, everything is in place to carry out the next big disruption in consumer electronics: the shift from the smartphone to connected glasses. An analysis in three parts.
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The smartphone, this “disruptable” product
First condition for a disruption to occur is that the market standard reaches the end of its life cycle and shows some serious signs of exhaustion. We have a range of indicators that attest to the fact that the smartphone is firmly anchored in this maturity phase:
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its growth rate is no longer progressing (Figure 1) and is essentially driven by equipment renewals and thesecond-hand market,
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the market is oligopolistic (Figure 2),
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The barriers at the entrance are very high,
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themarket shares are stablejust like the concentration index (the Herfindahl-Hirschman index is stable around 1058, a sign of a moderately concentrated market),
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The innovations around the standard are essentially incremental (facial recognition, AI, fingerprint unlocking, gradual improvement of video sensors, etc.) and are becoming less and less profitable for manufacturers,
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themanufacturers’ margins are under pressure, especially in the mid-range and low-end segments.
Race result: no electronics manufacturer is currently looking for a product that will be likely, in the long term, to replace the smartphone, or at least coexist with it. The question is therefore no longer whether the smartphone will be replaced, but by what and when?
An already well-developed ecosystem
Second condition for the occurrence of a disruption: it is necessary to be able to rely on a complete innovation ecosystem which, through its complementarity, offers a very significant potential utility value to users. The smartphone, for example, could not have established itself as it did without a very large pool of application developers, third-party equipment manufacturers, or telephone networks providing Internet access (very high speed).
In another context, the electric car cannot impose itself on the market by itself. It must rely on the parallel development of charging networks, maintenance networks, and even battery recycling infrastructures.
However, upon closer inspection, connected glasses already have a complete ecosystem ready to support innovation as it scales up (Figure 3). Not only does this ecosystem share essential technological components with that of smartphones, allowing a “running start,” but it is also composed of companies that have both the incentives and the technological and financial means to shift the market in favor of connected glasses.
Figure 3: Simplified ecosystem of the connected glasses
A product destined to decline
On the one hand, for the giants of electronics, AI, advertising, and software who would be excluded or outsiders from the smartphone market, the opportunity is too good not to strategically position themselves in an equipment market with colossal potential of several tens, or even hundreds of millions of units sold per year. On the other hand, if the leaders of the smartphone market are faced withinnovator’s dilemma, they do not want to find themselves stuck with a product doomed to decline and whose margins are eroding.
They therefore strategically place their pieces in this new ecosystem; there is no doubt that, like Edison in his time, they will know how to balance distinction and conformity to succeed,as rightly pointed out by Philippe Silberzhan, the crucial battle of adoption.
Best practices to encourage adoption
Third and final major condition for the occurrence of a disruption: the massive adoption of innovation. However, history has shown that while certain criteria such as price, design, or marketing are essential, nothing weighs more in adoption dynamics than the perceived value of use cases. It is this perceived value that not only increases the utility of the innovative product but simultaneously degrades that of standard products.
By way of illustration,despite a recent resurgence of interest, digital music players like the iPod are hardly useful anymore, as the smartphone + streaming platform combo takes over. Having already invested in purchasing a smartphone that allows music playback automatically reduces the incentives to invest in a device entirely dedicated to this function, even if the listening quality would prove to be superior.
Figure 4: Mapping of use cases for connected glasses
However, as can be seen in Figure 4, smart glasses are expected to do everything a smartphone already does (phone, music…), while improving the human-machine interface (such as in the case of real-time translation, or navigation with a HUD interface that is clearly more convenient than a phone screen), adding contextual informational layers—which are already alarming marketing departments around the world – and additional features particularly in the area of social sharing. When all of these uses become stable and efficient, it is very likely that a buyer who has purchased connected glasses, whatever the reason or motivation, will not replace their smartphone once it becomes obsolete.
Significant legal risks
The obstacles to the adoption of these glasses remain largely to be discovered. Of course, the price will be decisive, as much as the design, the perceived value of the uses, the quality of the interface, not to mention the social acceptance of an object likely to be even more intrusive than the smartphone (yes, it’s possible!).
On this subject, many French and European regulations could hinder the deployment of certain key features of connected glasses, and thereby reduce their usefulness.GDPR, for example, requires explicit consent for the capturing of images or videos, and considers continuous audio recording to be disproportionate (which partly contributed to the withdrawal of the connected friend.com necklace from the market).
Not to mention that facial recognition via AI is so strictly regulated, both under the GDPR and the AI Act, that its commercial applications in the EU today seem illusory. It should be recalled that the AI Act classifies biometrics, social scoring, or unconscious manipulation as unacceptable risks, that areas of medical applications, security, or education are closely monitored because they are considered “high risk,” and that emotion detection or contextual content generation are seen as “specific risks” justifying enhanced control. These are safeguards beneficial to some, or obstacles to innovation to others, which could limit the deployment of certain features in Europe, and consequently, the usability value of connected glasses.
This time, it’s different
These uncertainties mean that it is premature to say that connected glasses will quickly find their audience. But, we are talking about apotentially enormous marketwhich naturally sharpens appetites: 4 billion people worldwide wear glasses, with a replacement cycle of two to two and a half years, and an annual volume of 950 million frames sold. Sales are already growing so spectacularly (Figure 5) that Meta has decided topostpone the European launch of its “Ray-Ban Display”in Europe.
Proof that investors are ready to follow, the markets tremble at each new announcement from a tech giant stating their intention to launch (such asAppleorSamsung) or to re-enter this market (likeGoogle, more than 10 years after the failure of its Smart Glasses).
History, which, as everyone knows, tends to repeat itself, has shown that when so many companies, as powerful and influential as those appearing in the connected glasses ecosystem, have jointly invested considerable sums to develop and promote a product, they end up forming a “community of destiny” that is collectively interested in the success of the innovation… even if it means hastening the decline of the market standard. That is the “X factor” that suggests that, unlike the first attempts of the 2010s, this time, it really is different.
Julien Pillot does not work for, advise, hold shares in, receive funds from any organization that could benefit from this article, and has declared no other affiliation than his research institution.
–ref. The day when we will all wear connected glasses… is closer than you think!https://theconversation.com/the-day-when-we-will-all-wear-smart-glasses-is-closer-than-you-think-280519