Apple’s expensive Vision Pro headset has failed to capture any significant market share, forcing the company to take a more measured approach in the rumoured development of its smart glasses.

With Apple’s smart glasses, the company would shift from VR to AR, which would involve wearing lightweight glasses which allows users to see the real world while superimposing data on its field of vision.

An example of that could be Meta’s recently announced Orion prototype glasses which are fully holographic AR glasses.

The display’s screen isn’t made of glass, but of silicon carbide and uses tiny projectors in the arms of the glasses that “shoot light into waveguides that have nano-scale 3D structures etched into the lenses that can refract light” and “put holograms of different depths and sizes in the world in front of you.”

Google is also working with Samsung on an AR glasses partnership.

Meta Orion AR Glasses

Meta Orion AR Glasses

Apple originally hoped to release AR spectacles as a follow-up to the Vision Pro, but that product now remains a distant reality as the company is still grappling with the technology behind it, reported Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

Gurman says that Apple is already working on a version of visionOS — the Vision Pro’s software — that will run on its glasses.

It’s also exploring other types of wearable products, including a rival to Meta’s Ray-Ban spectacles and even camera-equipped AirPods.

Project Moohan

The company last year reportedly began internal research and feedback for the glasses in a project code-named Atlas, which involves gathering feedback from Apple employees on smart glasses. Additional focus groups are planned, and the studies are being led by its Product Systems Quality team.

Meta aims to launch AR glasses – with the working title of Artemis – in 2027. This year, Samsung is expected to release the first device based on Android XR, a new version of Google’s Android smartphone operating system customised for headsets and glasses. The looming question then is whether Apple’s rivals are getting too far ahead for the Cupertino company to eventually catch-up?