Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has revealed in an earnings call that they will be launching “smart” Ray-Ban augmented reality glasses.
“The glasses have their iconic form factor, and they let you do some pretty neat things… I’m excited to get these into people’s hands and to continue to make progress on the journey towards full augmented reality glasses in the future”.
Mark Zuckerberg
In the earnings call, Zuckerberg didn’t go into detail about the different features, or even what the glasses would look like.
However, we have been seeing reports on these augmented reality frames as early as 2019. With that being said, we haven’t seen any specs or even design images.
Recently, Facebook has been taking huge moves into new hardware, such as Virtual Reality with the Oculus.
Which has been seeing huge success with the Oculus Quest 2. It is one of the best-selling headsets period, and is making strides to make VR mainstream.
“So, in addition to being the next generation of the Internet, the metaverse is also going to be the next chapter for us as a company.” Says Zuckerberg.
“And in the coming years, I expect people will transition from seeing us primarily as a social media company to seeing us as a metaverse company. “
Facebook has been trying to make the shift from being primarily seen as a social media company, to one providing a Metaverse.
So what is a Metaverse? If you aren’t familiar with Ready Player One, it is a collective virtual shared space, where people can interact and explore.
So imagine the internet, but on a bigger scale. Where you could explore it all in virtual reality and share it with other people.
Along with this Ray-Ban smart glasses, Facebook is also developing ‘Project Aria’. Which was set to launch in 2021, but seems to be delayed due to COVID.
If you’re interested in seeing a transcript of the earnings call, you can check that out here.
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