TL;DR
Apple plans to revolutionize the $200 billion eyewear market the same way it revolutionized watches. Swatch fell 28%, Fossil 70%. Smart glasses aim for the end of 2027.
When Apple launched the Apple Watch in 2015, the mid-tier wristwatch market had a handful of dominant companies. Swatch Group sold watches under the management of Tissot, Hamilton and Longines. Fossil Group sold under Michael Kors, Armani and Kate Spade. Movado was sold under Coach, Hugo Boss and Tommy Hilfiger.
Ten years later, the damage is quantifiable. Swatch’s revenue will be 28% lower in 2025 than in 2014. Fossil’s sales fell by about 70%. Apple became the world’s largest watch maker by unit volume in just a few years and last year surpassed Rolex as the No. 1 watch brand by revenue. The Apple Watch currently generates about $17 billion a year.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple is planning the same manual for the glasses. The company sees the $200 billion global eyewear market as a bigger opportunity than watches and intends to compete directly with products selling between $200 and $500, a segment dominated by EssilorLuxottica (Ray-Ban, Oakley, Persol, Oliver Peoples), Safilo Group (Tommy Hilfiger, Hugo Boss) and Warby Parker.
The addressable market is amazing. The WHO estimates that 2.2 billion people around the world have some type of visual impairment. Hundreds of millions of pairs of glasses are sold every year. Apple believes that its branding, industrial design, integration with the iPhone and artificial intelligence features will lead people looking for new normal glasses to buy a pair from Apple.
Apple’s first glasses, codenamed N50, were initially planned for late 2026 and would ship in early 2027. Delays have pushed the schedule back to a late 2027 launch, Gurman reports. The product will use oval-shaped cameras, unique colors, and multiple frame styles. Over time, Apple believes the glasses could become a health device and eventually incorporate augmented reality.
Meta has a substantial advantage. It sold more than seven million Ray-Ban smart glasses in 2025 and controls approximately 82% of the smart glasses market. It has retail partnerships with LensCrafters and is constantly releasing new models, with more coming in June. Meta also leads the AI features and has the advantage of working with Android, which is still larger than iOS globally.
Apple’s historic refusal to support Android gives Meta the opportunity to own that side of the market permanently. Ironically, Apple’s entry could benefit Meta by generating greater consumer enthusiasm for smart glasses, with Android users gravitating toward Meta’s models.
Meta is also expanding its wearables strategy beyond glasses. An internal memo leaked this week confirmed that the company is developing an AI pendant and a “Wearables for work“Enterprise subscription. The competitive landscape is broadening even before Apple’s product is launched.
The risk for Apple is time. Each month of delay gives Meta more users, more retail presence, and more data about what consumers want from smart glasses. The product depends on a renewed Siri that has already been delayed for two years. The new Siri app in iOS 27 may still be released as a beta version.
Tim Cook has described glasses as his top priority. Incoming CEO John Ternus is the driving force behind the project. The Vision Products Group that develops the glasses has operated under his leadership for the past two years. Support from the highest levels of Apple is not in doubt. The execution schedule is.
Not all eyewear companies need to worry. High fashion brands that sell glasses for thousands of dollars, names like Cartier, Lindberg, Jacques Marie Mage and Maison Bonnet, are likely to continue to thrive. Apple never made a significant impact on the luxury watch market despite its attempt to make $10,000 gold Apple Watches. Rolex generated an estimated $14 billion in revenue last year, more than doubling its sales from a decade earlier.
The target is the mass market, not the luxury segment. Apple is going after EssilorLuxottica, Safilo and Warby Parker in the same way it went after Swatch, Fossil and Movado. The pattern is clear: enter an established consumer products market, offer something that integrates with the iPhone, and wait for the incumbents’ revenue to decline.
Apple’s Watch business faces new competitive pressure from screenless wearables like Google’s Whoop, Oura, and Fitbit Air. The company needs a new growing category of hardware. Glasses, if executed well, could be it. The target market is not millions of users. They are billions.
Gurman also reported that iOS 27’s Siri app will sync conversations between devices via iCloud. Early work on iOS 28 (codenamed Bell) and macOS 28 (codenamed Poppy) has begun, with next year’s releases expected to be “much bigger” than the iOS 27 updates. A new Apple TV set-top box and a HomePod mini are almost ready, as their release was delayed for months alongside the new Siri.
