At Meta’s software developers conference in Menlo Park., Calif., this week, Mark Zuckerberg strutted onto the stage to show off a new gadget: a pair of glasses with cameras and a tiny screen projected into the corner of the frame.
The presentation was similar in ambition to product unveilings of Macs, iPhones and iPads when Steve Jobs ran Apple. Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, laid out his vision for how computerized glasses would become the future of personal computing. The new glasses, the $800 Meta Ray-Ban Display, which runs apps similar to a smartphone, were supposed to show that Meta was light years ahead of the competition. But it failed its first public demonstration. And then another.
Unlike the “big tent” moments that Mr. Jobs oversaw for years as the ringmaster of Apple’s product demonstrations, Mr. Zuckerberg drew more snickers than applause. He became a meme on social media, and tech news sites mocked his glitch-filled performance.
The product’s snafus, including a video call failing onstage, were effectively a dismantling of an image that Meta’s marketing team had carefully crafted for Mr. Zuckerberg over the last few years. In press interviews featuring Meta’s top brass and its glasses, along with online videos posted by influencers showing off the product, it would appear as though Meta was on the cusp of something big enough to dethrone industry titans like Apple and Samsung to become the next leader in computing hardware.
But realistically, it’s nowhere close. The company’s smart glasses remain a niche. As of February, Meta had sold about two million of its $300 Ray-Ban Meta camera glasses since their 2023 debut, and it hopes to sell 10 million annually by the end of 2026, which is a tiny amount for a company this size. In the last decade, Meta has spent over $100 billion on its virtual and augmented reality division, which includes its smart glasses and is not profitable. Last quarter, the division reported a $4.5 billion loss, nearly the same as a year ago.
For perspective, Apple sells hundreds of millions of iPhones and tens of millions of smart watches each year. (In fairness, Apple has shipped far fewer Vision Pro headsets — a few hundred thousand to date, according to estimates — compared with Meta, which has sold tens of millions of its Quest headsets.)
If smart glasses do eventually become mainstream, the product might come from a brand that has a better reputation with consumers, like Google, which unveiled a prototype of its smart glasses powered by its A.I. chatbot, Gemini, this year, or Apple, which is reportedly developing similar hardware.
Analysts say the Meta Ray-Ban Display will be a small seller for the foreseeable future because of its high price and the uncertainty around whether people will want a screen on their face while out and about. (Remember Google Glass?)
Meta appears, however, to be making progress with fixing some of the most glaring issues with computers you wear on your face. Unlike Google Glass and other headsets that looked bulky and off-putting, the Meta Ray-Ban Display felt comfortable and resembled normal eyewear. Battery life, estimated at six hours, may be sufficient to help get someone through a busy day.
Meta’s executive overseeing augmented reality, Alex Himel, said in an interview that the company designed the product to have greater longevity by making good use of every inch in the glasses for components. It also programmed the screen to turn off soon after people stopped interacting with it so that it doesn’t drain power.
But our 30-minute test with the Meta Ray-Ban Display, which arrive in stores on Sept. 30, was as spotty as Mr. Zuckerberg’s demonstration. A wristband included with the glasses that detects hand gestures for controlling apps on the screen occasionally failed to register finger swipes. Meta spokespeople blamed its issues on crowded Wi-Fi networks.
Even if the glasses turn out to be solid when they arrive in stores, Meta has yet to fix a deeper problem with its brand: a longstanding distrust between the company and its customers over how it has mishandled people’s data.
Glasses with cameras, which have implications for surveillance and privacy, could exacerbate Meta’s challenges because the products subtly record what wearers see and hear. They emit a tiny light to indicate when a recording is happening, which can be hard to notice. As the glasses become mainstream, concerns about privacy will only grow, said Carolina Milanesi, a consumer technology analyst for Creative Strategies, a research firm.
On Instagram and TikTok, some influencers have faced backlash over using the glasses to discreetly film videos without the consent of the people in them. In a viral TikTok video, Aniessa Navarro, an influencer, shared a story about when she discovered her aesthetician for a Brazilian wax was wearing Meta Ray-Bans during her appointment. (The wax center told The Washington Post that the glasses were powered off.)
The Meta Ray-Bans also made headlines this year when the F.B.I. reported that the man in New Orleans who drove a truck into a crowded street had worn the camera glasses to scout out the area weeks before the attack.
“The problem isn’t just the privacy of people sharing their data, it’s the privacy of all the people around them that might not even know they’re being filmed,” Ms. Milanesi said. “And people don’t have trust in Meta.”
Still, she said, if Meta’s smart glasses are the best and cheapest on the market, plenty of people might put aside their concerns with the company in exchange for a product they enjoy using.
But the writing can be read on the internet’s walls: the web forums and comment sections discussing Meta’s new glasses. In videos posted on social media showing the glasses, some commenters said they lacked trust in Meta and would buy the product if it was made by a different company.
On Hacker News, a web forum for tech workers to talk about Silicon Valley developments, people discussing the technology in the new Meta glasses raised concerns about the implications for surveillance and privacy because the product was made by Meta, likening the product to something in a “Black Mirror” episode.
All this may not matter to Meta because it can afford to keep trying until it gets it right. Thanks to its online advertising business, the company made $18.3 billion in profit in its most recent quarter, even though it spent billions on Mr. Zuckerberg’s other big passion that is not yet making much money — artificial intelligence.
“If we end up misspending a couple of hundred billion dollars, I think that is going to be very unfortunate,” Mr. Zuckerberg said of his A.I. investments on a recent podcast. “But I think the risk, at least for a company like Meta, is probably in not being aggressive enough.”