‘Apple plans smart glasses for 2026 as part of AI Push’ said the headlines of the story in this paper (26 May 2025). With Meta having stolen the lead with its Rayban MetaAI glasses, Apple will have its job cut out. Can Apple do to the smart glasses market what it did with mobile phones when it launched iPhone in June 2007?
Thinking back, Apple was not the first with the mobile phone. Brands like Nokia, Motorola and Sony had moved ahead. Blackberry had the enterprise market in its vice like grip with even President Obama swearing by it. Apple managed to upstage all its competitors who had believed that you need to offer a keyboard on a mobile device. In fact Blackberry swore by its querty-keyboard, unable to dump it even when the writing was on the wall. Nokia too did not respond fast enough as Apple changed the language of mobile phones by creating a new term: smartphone. Apple’s secret or not so secret sauce was its App Store which allowed third parties to develop and sell apps to Apple iPhone users. In the wake of this smartphone wave, brands like Blackberrry, Nokia, Sony and even Motorola faced rapid decline. It was left to Samsung to create exciting smartphones that used the Google created Android platform.
Smartphones are everywhere today and India boasts of over 650 smartphone users. If smartphones are ubiquitous so are what is known in the trade as TWS, true wireless stereo, or earpods for short. When Apple ditched its headphone jack in 2016 I was wondering will consumers be ready to invest in a TWS? But that is what has happened. Not just with Apple but also with all other smartphones. It is impossible not to see someone one Indian roads who does not have a TWS sticking out of his or her ear. An Indian brand Boat is today seen as a trendsetter and a global player in TWS devices.
Smartphones are today bought for not just making calls or sharing mails, they are also cameras to the extent several brands are sold on the basis of better lenses etc. If you visit the famous Lalbaghcha Raja during the Ganapati Festival in Mumbai you can see almost everyone holding up their smartphone. Who is getting the darshan, the devotee or his/her smartphone, you wonder. The same can be said of other memorable moments. Will you be watching your child blowing her two candles on her second birthday, or will you be hiding behind a smartphone?
All this may change if smart glasses take root and grow. Smart glasses can help you take calls, listen to music, take photographs and also shoot videos. It is possible that in the future we can watch a celebrity wave to us and wave back, instead of hiding behind a smartphone! The same should apply to celebrations, weddings, birthdays and more.
Will consumers be ready to adopt this innovation in large numbers. Smartphones have become ubiquitous. So have TWS. Smart watches too, to an extent. Will the Smart Glasses innovation travel far?
It was Everett Rogers who proposed the theory of ‘Diffusion of Innovation’. Based on work done on pharmaceuticals and hybrid seeds, his theory first published in 1962, proved that there are different classes of consumers when it comes to adoption of innovative products. The innovators (2.5%) who those who try anything new. The early adopters (13.5%) are those who follow the innovators. Then come the early majority (34%), then the late majority (34%). And finally the laggards (16%), those who are still using feature phones, in our smartphone story. New products have to understand the dynamics and make sure they change their narrative as a product gains ground (do read my article on Dr. M S Swaminathan and the way he used diffusion of innovation theory to spread hybrid seed movement in India in Business Standard 23 January, 2024). Andy Grove in his book ‘Crossing the Chasm’ proposed a corollary to Rogers’ theory. He said that many technology products quite easily find innovators to try the hot new device. They even get the early adopters. But if the marketer is not careful the product could well fall into the chasm that divides the early adopters and the early majority. Unless the story is suitably adapted the early majority may well dismiss the new product as a new toy for the geeks. Products like the original Segway, VR Headsets, Google Glass and Apple Newton have not been able to cross the chasm.
For smart glasses to cross the chasm brands will have to do a lot more than just lower prices though lower prices will help. They have to actively create use case scenarios. They have to reach the early majority with new narratives that may be irrelevant to the innovators. If they manage to do that we will be seeing smart glasses all around us and we will not see people desperately reaching for their smartphones on every memorable occasion or what used to be called the ‘Kodak Moment’.
Appeared originally in Business Standard June 2025