Meta Reportedly Set to Expand Retail Locations as Smart Glasses Competition Heats Up

Meta has been flirting with retail for years now, nonetheless a Enterprise Insider report maintains the corporate is lastly seeking to develop its retail footprint past its first and solely brick-and-mortar location.

Citing an inside communication, the report maintains Meta is seeking to rent retail employees and roll out extra bodily shops, that are thought to transcend the form of pop-up areas the corporate experimented with late final 12 months.

It’s stated the plans may mirror Apple’s retail technique, though the communication seen by Enterprise Insider is “not broadly identified internally but,” suggesting it’s nonetheless early days.

Whereas Meta’s newest pop-up in Los Angeles garnered a good quantity of press late final 12 months, since 2016 the corporate has really launched quite a few pop-up shops along with partnering with retailers like Finest Purchase to supply demo areas for its line of XR headsets.

Past pop-ups, the corporate at the moment operates a single everlasting Meta Retailer in Burlingame, California, which opened subsequent to its Actuality Labs campus in 2022. There, clients can demo Quest 3 and Quest 3S, in addition to Ray-Ban Meta sensible glasses.

The most important driver for the retail rollout is regarded as Ray-Ban Meta Glasses nonetheless, that are inbuilt partnership with French-Italian eyewear conglomerate EssilorLuxottica.

In 2024 alone, Meta offered greater than 1 million items of its Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, making it what CEO Mark Zuckerberg known as on the time “an amazing begin.”

Earlier this 12 months, EssilorLuxottica CEO Francesco Milleri stated the corporate had plans to ramp up manufacturing capability to 10 million annual items by the tip of 2026.

Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, which pack in cameras for photographs and video, in addition to onboard Meta AI assistant and off-ear audio system, are already out there in a lot of types and lens configurations, though that’s seemingly set to alter.

Notably, a report from Bloomberg in April alleged the corporate is aiming to introduce a lot of new sensible glasses, together with a pair with built-in show and a sportier pair from EssilorLuxottica sub-brand Oakley.

And the section is heating up. Google confirmed off its personal pair of sensible glasses on stage at Google I/O earlier this month, asserting it’s partnering with eyewear firms Warby Parker and Light Monster to launch a number of variations of its Android XR Glasses within the close to future.

In the meantime, a report from earlier this month alleged Apple can also be stepping into the sensible glasses section too, because the Cupertino tech big is reportedly now producing a wise glasses chip based mostly on the low-energy processors utilized in Apple Watches, which is optimized for energy effectivity and the flexibility to regulate a number of cameras.