Meta Plans to Provide the First Samples of its AR Glasses to Testers Next Yr

Meta’s AR glasses strategy continues to be revised, with the corporate now planning to ship only a thousand pairs of its initial AR glasses, which it’s seeking to get out to early testers sometime next 12 months.

Based on a brand new report from The Information, Meta will take the same approach to Snap Inc., in constructing an initial small test batch of its AR device, which it would provide to chose partners and creators for experiments.

On condition that Snap lost hundreds of thousands on the production of its first iteration of its Spectacles, that approach makes numerous sense, while it’ll also give Meta some early samples of the user experience to showcase to potential buyers, before a full business release of the glasses in 2027.

Meta’s AR glasses have already suffered various delays as a result of hardware complications and broader cost-cutting, as Meta works to barter the downturn in ad spend.

It was recently revealed that the corporate’s acquisition of microLED maker Plessey, which it hoped would give it a leg up on the competition, has did not deliver as expected, as a result of complications in integrating Plessey’s hardware into the device, while Meta’s initial foray into wearables, in Ray Ban Stories, has also did not catch on with consumers, with only a fraction of the 300k or so pairs sold still seeing regular use.

But Meta’s still pushing forward with AR, which it sees as an element of its larger metaverse vision. The corporate has tried to include various technological advances under a single banner, with AR glasses tied into the metaverse push, as a way to raised integrate users into this digital realm.

But as with every AR project, it’s proving increasingly complex.

Meta’s also facing challenges with the materials that it wants to make use of for the device, a few of which violate export regulations, while it’s also still establishing a full production process for the glasses.

All of this will probably be a part of this early test run, which can see a small variety of Meta AR glasses appearing sometime next 12 months, which it’ll be hoping to make use of as a driver for the subsequent stage of the event.

In other words, when you were really keen on getting yourself some Meta AR glasses, I wouldn’t be getting too excited just yet, because it still has a approach to go in establishing the viability of the project, and the way it would get these to consumers.

Nevertheless it does already have an early model for internal testing, and it is probably going that it would indeed soon find a way to supply a working consumer model, albeit in barely different form to what it hoped.

Possibly they won’t find yourself looking as cool as Ray Ban Stories, but in the event that they function as advertised, they usually don’t require a tether (like Apple’s coming VisionPro), there’ll still be big interest within the product.