A Glimpse into the Future: Meta and EssilorLuxottica's Visionary Leap with RAY-BAN STORIES

Yet again, the digital world is poised for a technological sea change, and this time it is a Meta product (the former Facebook, now the owner of Oculus) working with EssilorLuxottica to lead the way. The pair’s initial release, the Ray-Ban Stories AR product, has made waves, and they are not standing still. Just prior to Meta’s Connect 2024 event, the duo announced their partnership would go through 2030s, not just with a product, but with what appears to be a multi-generational product roadmap for smart eyewear that will change the way we interact with our digital lives.

The Blazing Success of RAY-BAN STORIES

The glasses, which Meta calls Ray-Ban Stories, have sold faster than any previous eyewear products in the history of Ray-Ban. Soon they will be available in several countries outside the US, Canada and much of Europe. EssilorLuxottica is the big winner, as is Meta (formerly Facebook) after investing $5.7 billion for a 9.99 per cent stake in the former earlier this year. The partnership has been a success, and it reflects a shared vision of glasses as becoming the next platform for technology, the future-gadget layer that melts seamlessly into fashion.

A Visionary Expansion into the 2030s

The extended contract reflects more than commercial ambition: it’s a commitment to innovation. As Francesco Milleri, the chairman and CEO of EssilorLuxottica, said on the occasion of the multi-year renewal: ‘We have taken an early, important step in our long-term vision to transform glasses into the gateway to the connected world.’ Or, as Mark Zuckerberg put it: ‘We see the next platform for computing being essentially glasses.’

Zuckerberg's Bet on AR Smartglasses

As far back as 2017, Zuckerberg had expressed his enthusiasm for AR technology, and the Ray-Ban success has further reinforced his optimism. As far as demand goes, notes Barry Collins, senior analyst at ABI Research, ‘it’s good to see that people are buying them’. This, says Collins, is a good sign for AR-integrated lifestyles – that public demand is emerging sooner rather than later. Zuckerberg’s comments indicate that Meta’s AR smart glasses plan is now more readily apparent. In January 2022, he remarked to New York Times columnist Kara Swisher: ‘I’m confident that this holographic AR glasses technology is going to become a big part of the world much sooner than people expect.

The Future Unveiled: Integrating AR into Daily Life

Meta’s Connect 2024 is going to be a big one – or so it would seem. The company will finally reveal more details about Orion, a new pair of AR smart glasses that it has been developing for years. This announcement could change the VR and MR industries in the coming years. Learn more about our AR and VR translation services. Meta’s chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth has hinted that we are looking at a groundbreaking AR product.

From Spark to Advanced Smart Glasses

Meta shuttering Spark, therefore, is about sacrificing the AR SDK for a more ambitious generation of AR glasses, a buy-in for a certain techno-futuristic primacy. Even as headlines continue to ask whether AR glasses are too creepy, Meta’s decision makes clear that power for AR is not about the glasses – it’s about who creates the AR content and how. While the partnership may or may not produce superior AR software, it will certainly reconfigure how that content reaches users and is made available to them.

Understanding RAY: The Technology Shaping Our Future

A bestselling eyewear accessory, Ray-Ban Stories represents an leap towards digital experiences that can be embedded into our daily lives in more intuitive ways. Through its advanced AR features the brand could turn regular eyewear into interactive smart gadgets, allowing us to stay connected, informed and entertained in ways never before possible. In this exciting transition into an AR-enriched future, Ray technology reflects a soaring ambition towards tighter digital-physical convergence.

As such, the partnership between Meta and EssilorLuxottica – with Ray-Ban Stories as its first pièce de résistance – is just the tip of the iceberg of this futurist plan, one stretching into the 2030s. In this new light, Ray technology looks set to spearhead a future where technology isn’t simply an external object with which we engage, but an inherent part of ourselves and the world around us.