Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses seem to be selling too well, as the company announced it’s delaying the international rollout of its first display-clad smart glasses.
The News
Initially released in the US back in September, Meta said it was hoping to bring the $800 smart glasses to a number of regions in early 2026, which includes a single color display embedded in the right lens.
Now, the company says in a blog post it’s decided to “pause” the planned expansion to the UK, France, Italy and Canada, citing “unprecedented demand and limited inventory.”
The company characterizes stock as “extremely limited,” noting that its seen an “overwhelming amount of interest, and as a result, product waitlists now extend well into 2026.”
Meta says it will continue to focus on fulfilling orders in the US while they “re-evaluate [the] approach to international availability.”
My Take
I was looking forward to getting my hands on a pair of Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses here in Italy, one of the regions currently on “pause”—which my Corpo-to-English translator says I probably shouldn’t hold my breath.
While Meta Ray-Ban Display can’t do everything promised just yet—and doesn’t actually have an app store—the device can do a fair number of things I was hoping to test out if it fit into my daily life.
After all, it can do everything the audio-only Ray-Ban Meta glasses can do in addition to serving up a viewfinder for taking photos and video, the ability to see and respond to messages via WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram, and give you turn-by-turn walking directions in supported cities.
Months after launch, Meta says it’s also now pushed an update that includes a teleprompter, the previously teased EMG handwriting, as well as more cities for pedestrian navigation.
Still, it makes a lot more sense from a manufacturing perspective. Meta needs to go slow and deliberate with Meta Ray-Ban Display though, if only based on the fact that the device has likely been heavily subsidized to not be eye-wateringly expensive out of the gate; the company is no doubt eating the fairly high bill of materials if only based on waveguide wastage rates. No app store also means no app revenue, making the first-gen decidedly more of a large beta test than anything.
So, right now it seems like Meta is deliberately going slow to make sure use cases, distribution, and supply chain are all in place before really cashing in on the second gen—maybe following Quest’s playbook; in 2019, the company released the original Quest only to toss out Quest 2 a year later, making for the company’s best-selling XR device to date—and also leaving everyone who bought the first-gen to upgrade only a year later.
