Upstart smart glasses company Even Realities launched Even Hub, an open app store and developer platform for its G2 line of display-style smart glasses. This could be the first salvo in a war between open- and closed-platform display smart glasses.
On one side is Meta. The Goliath of the smart glasses market has thus far taken a completely closed approach to its newish Display glasses: Meta decides what your smart glasses can do and determines what apps you can access. The David to Meta’s Goliath is Even Realities, a boutique tech company that just launched a storefront with over 50 apps made by third-party developers, so users can decide for themselves what to install and what to ignore.
While the market for AR-style smart glasses with displays is currently limited to tech enthusiasts and early adopters, if HUD-style glasses catch on — and both companies maintain their current strategies — the winner could determine how much control users will have over their augmented futures.
Competing Strategies for Display-Style Smart Glasses
In terms of total market share, Meta and Even Realities aren’t in the same universe. Meta’s market capitalization is approximately $1.47 trillion, and its line of Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses make up about 82% of the smart glasses market. According to Prospero, Even Realities is worth an estimated $10 million — though a spokesperson for Even Realities says their valuation is significantly higher, at least $500 million.
Within the niche of display-integrated glasses, however, Meta and Even Realities are peers. Estimates for 2025–2026 suggest that Meta has sold around 20,000 of its high-end Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses. Prospero’s numbers suggest Even Realities has moved between 10,000 and 25,000 pairs of its G2 glasses, while the company itself estimates its G2 sales reach into the “hundreds of thousands,” the spokesperson said.
The two companies are taking very different approaches to selling “glasses with a HUD.” Meta’s Display spectacles are priced at $799 and are designed to do everything its popular non-display glasses do, with the addition of full-color, high-quality video and a distinctive Ray-Ban look. Even Realities’ $599 G2 glasses don’t have an onboard camera or audio, and the mono-color display is housed in a very discreet frame that no one will suspect is anything but a normal pair of specs. They’re designed to be fashionable, functional, everyday glasses that can also project a map in front of your eyes or help you con bartenders when you need them to. A review of the previous generation of Even Realities glasses is available for more background.
The most important divide between these companies might prove to be their approach to software. All technology sits on a continuum between “open” and “closed,” and Meta’s smart glasses have, so far, been far into the restricted part of that spectrum. You get a highly curated experience, with Meta acting as the arbiter of what is installed on your face computer, whether you’re using Display glasses or Ray-Ban Metas. You don’t download apps — you toggle “experiences” on and off. You can choose to disable or enable Apple Music, but you can’t choose to listen to music on a new platform developed by a third party. You can’t delete core features you don’t want. Even something as basic as changing the wake-up words for the AI is off-limits; it’s “Hey, Meta,” or it’s nothing.
Even Realities’ approach is semi-open, like Apple’s App Store. It’s not the “anything goes” approach of Linux, but you can peruse Even Realities’ library of approved apps and choose whether or not you need an in-glasses EPUB reader, a chess game, or a charge indicator for your Tesla. Even Realities also lets you remove core features you don’t use.
It’s worth noting that Meta isn’t fundamentally opposed to third-party development. The company’s Meta Horizon Store for the Quest line of VR headsets is a massive, vibrant marketplace with everything from high-end games to small indie tools on offer, and the company shut down much of its first-party VR development while pledging to continue supporting independent developers. So it’s possible — even probable — that Meta is waiting for the hardware to mature before opening a more expansive store for its glasses, or simply adding a “Display” section to the existing Horizon Store.
Open Isn’t Necessarily Better
While the knee-jerk reaction might be to conclude that the choice offered by an open system is more desirable than a closed one, that hasn’t always been the case in the tech world. Nintendo dominated video games in the 1980s by tightly controlling what software could run on its hardware — a strategy that kept quality high and consumers confident in their purchases. Apple’s walled garden has similarly proven enormously successful despite constant criticism from open-source advocates. Whether Even Realities’ open approach wins users over, or whether Meta’s curated experience proves more appealing to the mainstream, remains to be seen as display-style smart glasses move beyond early adopters and into everyday life.
