The battle of a hundred smart glasses among "Xiaomi and its peers" has brought popularity to domestic smart glasses manufacturers.

On a Wednesday afternoon during a weekday, inside a Dr. Glasses store in Nanjing, groups of young people were holding AI glasses they had snapped up during the Double 11 shopping festival, inquiring about the eyewear fitting prices. On one side, the sales staff were skillfully introducing the process, including eye examinations and lens selection, which were the same as the traditional eyewear fitting procedures.

On the other side of the counter, smart glasses from brands such as XREAL and Rokid were on display, allowing consumers passing by to try them on and make purchases.

This scene is taking place in traditional offline eyewear stores.

Since October this year, AI and AR glasses have entered a period of intensive new product launches. According to incomplete statistics from "Silicon Research Lab", many domestic manufacturers, including Baidu, Alibaba, Thunderbird Innovation, Rokid, and ShadowEye Technology, have all released new products. During this year's Double 11 shopping festival, smart glasses became a highlight of growth in the battle reports of major e - commerce platforms.

Tmall data shows that during this year's Double 11, the turnover of the smart glasses category on the platform soared by 2500% year - on - year. On November 11th, the battle report of the 3C digital category released by JD.com also showed that the turnover of smart glasses on the platform skyrocketed by 346% year - on - year.

Behind the soaring sales data, eyewear manufacturers and retailers working for smart glasses manufacturers have also witnessed a surge.

Mingyue Lens (301101.SZ), the "first domestic lens stock" backed by Xiaomi, specifically wrote in its third - quarter financial report that as of September 30th this year, the cumulative revenue from the Xiaomi AI glasses business that the company has cooperated with reached 6.51 million yuan, and the gross profit margin of smart glasses was as high as 78.6%, significantly higher than the company's gross profit level of nearly 60%.

Another lens manufacturer, Conant Optical (02276.HK), saw its stock price start an upward trend after announcing that Goertek had taken a stake in December last year. On November 17th, 2025, it hit the highest stock price since its listing. Since the end of December last year, the maximum increase in Conant Optical's stock price has exceeded 117%.

In the past few years, domestic eyewear manufacturers stuck on the path of high - end transformation have had a tough time due to the market characteristics of "high gross profit, low net profit" combined with low market concentration.

Compared with the high investment required for self - building brands and R & D, working for "Xiaomi and its ilk" seems to be a good choice as it can bring in high - margin business and increase brand awareness.

However, working for "Xiaomi and its ilk" is not a once - and - for - all solution.

On the one hand, domestic eyewear manufacturers like Mingyue Lens account for a small share of the value in smart glasses. After all, this is still a business of selling manufacturing and services.

On the other hand, "Xiaomi and its ilk" have too many choices. Among them, there are not only giants like Essilor Luxottica but also many small and medium - sized eyewear stores offering "affordable alternatives" for price - sensitive users.

1. Earning Seven Million in Two Months, Smart Glasses Boost Traditional Eyewear Manufacturers

The "battle of a hundred glasses" among smart glasses manufacturers boosting the sales of lenses is not an accident.

Essilor Luxottica, the world's largest eyewear and lens manufacturer, benefited from its cooperation with Meta on smart glasses and achieved its best quarterly performance ever. Smart glasses contributed more than 4 percentage points to the sales growth. At the earnings meeting, executives also said that they had accelerated the capacity expansion plan for smart glasses in advance.

In July this year, Meta acquired a 3% stake in Essilor Luxottica for approximately 3 billion euros.

Back in China, smart glasses, which are favored by capital, have also driven the high growth of related businesses and the rise of stock prices of "Mingyue Lens and its ilk".

According to the latest performance disclosure of Conant Optical, it has received payments including development fees, small initial orders, and mass - production orders for individual key domestic projects. As of August 31st, 2025, the company's XR business had accumulated revenues of approximately 10 million yuan, including 3 million yuan recognized in the first half of 2025.

Calculated in this way, Conant Optical's XR business earned 7 million yuan in revenue in just two months, far exceeding the growth in the first half of the year.

The "battle of a hundred glasses" among front - end smart glasses manufacturers is in full swing. Why are the "lens sellers" booming? The reason is not complicated.

First, smart glasses need to solve the basic problem of myopia eyewear fitting.

With the increasing sales of smart glasses, the demand for eyewear fitting among myopic people has gradually increased.

Currently, there are two mainstream methods for AI glasses lenses. One is to directly attach or mount customized prescription lenses on the frame through magnetic snaps or other means. The other is similar to traditional offline eye examinations and eyewear fitting. Consumers can hand over their requirements for the frame and lenses of AI glasses to an optometry institution, and the institution will send them to an optometry center or a lens enterprise for customization and installation.

Traditional eyewear manufacturers with in - house eyewear fitting services, such as Dr. Glasses and Mingyue Lens, have become the entry points for consumers to have their eyewear fitted and make purchases offline. Traditional eyewear manufacturers can mainly obtain relevant lens fitting revenues and sales commissions from this.

Second, the consumer electronics nature of smart glasses has allowed eyewear manufacturers with "efficient offline lens supply" to reap the benefits.

The "impossible triangle" in the smart glasses industry is described as "lightweight, long battery life, and high performance". On the one hand, users' demand for the "lightweight" of smart glasses often requires ultra - thin lenses with high refractive indices during the eyewear fitting process.

On the other hand, as smart glasses become more fashionable, users' personalized demands for frame design and lens functions (such as photochromic and anti - blue - light lenses) have gradually increased. Therefore, eyewear manufacturers that can efficiently supply lenses and offer a wide range of frame options offline have naturally become a key link in the consumption chain.

A field visit by "Silicon Research Lab" to stores such as Dr. Glasses and Xiaomi also found that after consumers purchase smart glasses products offline, the sales staff will recommend that they go to relevant authorized stores to complete the eyewear fitting service according to their needs.

According to a Xiaomi salesperson, Xiaomi has reached cooperation agreements with more than 400 partner eyewear stores across the country.

Third, backed by smart glasses manufacturers, smart glasses business presents a high profit margin for traditional eyewear manufacturers.

For traditional eyewear manufacturers, smart glasses are a typical high - profit business.

Firstly, backed by the star power of smart glasses manufacturers, "Mingyue Lens and its ilk" do not need to spend a large amount of sales expenses as they would for self - building brands, and the offline channel system can be maximally reused.

Secondly, the high - refractive - index and customized lenses required for smart glasses eyewear fitting have relatively high gross profits.

This is why the gross profit margin of Mingyue Lens' smart glasses business is as high as 78.6%.

However, although the smart glasses business with high gross profit and high growth potential seems to be a good business, it may be a seemingly prosperous new growth curve for traditional eyewear manufacturers.

2. Meta Also Has to Work for the Giants

There is an important turning point for domestic smart glasses startups to embrace traditional eyewear manufacturers collectively:

The popularity of Ray - Ban Meta.

In September last year, after the news that Meta was taking a stake in Essilor Luxottica spread, Thunderbird Innovation also announced the establishment of a joint venture with Dr. Glasses.

Zhang Haochen, the co - founder of Thunderbird Innovation, emotionally praised his partner in an interview with the media:

"A team with only strong AI capabilities or only 3C experience will definitely not be able to do well in the eyewear business. Putting an AI glasses in a Huawei store will definitely not have the same effect and influence as putting it in a traditional channel like a Dr. Glasses store."

This is not the first time that smart glasses manufacturers have praised their partners. The last one to do so was Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta.

In September last year, after the release of the new AR glasses, Zuckerberg did not hide his optimism about Essilor Luxottica: "I think they will develop from the world's leading eyewear company into one of the world's major technology companies."

At that time, on the smart glasses battlefield, the cooperation between Meta and the eyewear giant inspired most domestic manufacturers:

The key to smart glasses is not to first study how to add technology and functions to glasses, but to first take an off - the - shelf fashionable item, Ray - Ban glasses, and then integrate smart technology into it.

Domestic manufacturers have followed suit, trying to replicate this proven path by learning from Meta and Essilor Luxottica.

However, so far, no one has been able to surpass the "one - million - level global shipment record" maintained by Ray - Ban Meta, not even Meta itself when it launched new products.

When we reviewed the popularity of Ray - Ban Meta, we found a strange phenomenon:

Most of the technology circle spent a great deal of effort analyzing Meta's own AI technology accumulation, such as integrating functions like voice assistants, real - time translation, and photo and video recording into the glasses through the built - in Meta AI function, and finding the best balance between mass production and performance under the existing lightweight and technological framework.

However, the contribution of Essilor Luxottica is easily overlooked.

Ray - Ban Meta's popularity is largely due to this global eyewear giant.

Essilor Luxottica is a typical global merger - based giant. Essilor, founded in France in 1972, was formed by the merger of two eyewear brands: Essel, a glass lens manufacturer founded in 1849, and Silor, a resin lens manufacturer founded in 1931.

Luxottica, the world's largest sunglasses company, was established in 1961 and owns many brands and retail channels, such as Ray - Ban, Sunglasses Hut, and Pearle Vision.

In addition, it is also responsible for manufacturing and selling glasses for luxury brands such as Armani, Burberry, and Chanel.

One is an optical technology giant, and the other is an eyewear retail giant. In 2017, Luxottica and Essilor officially announced a merger agreement, and a "behemoth" was born.

Essilor Luxottica, with its in - house R & D, design, production, and manufacturing capabilities, has covered the upstream and downstream of the eyewear industry through vertical integration.

Therefore, Meta found not just a partner for smart glasses but an all - around "deep - pocketed backer".

First, it is the precise pricing.

The non - smart version of Ray - Ban glasses is priced at $199. After adding smart functions, the price only increased by $100 to $299, greatly reducing the user's trial - and - error threshold.

According to the data from wellsenn XR, as the frame and OEM/ODM supplier, Essilor Luxottica accounts for approximately $31 in the value of a Ray - Ban Meta, accounting for 18.90%.

Comparing the BOM costs of the first - and second - generation Ray - Ban smart glasses products, the difference is actually not significant. The BOM cost of RayBan Stories (the first cooperation product) is approximately $155.7, and the BOM cost of Ray - Ban Meta is approximately $174. The cost difference mainly comes from the motherboard chip.

This shows that Meta has fully leveraged Essilor Luxottica's eyewear production and manufacturing capabilities, and the synergy effect of the two sides in supply chain integration has not significantly transferred the cost of product iteration to consumers.

Second, behind the precise pricing is the full support of Essilor Luxottica's brand, channel, and sales capabilities.

According to the follow - up survey by the institution Counterpoint, Essilor Luxottica has continuously supported the sales of Ray - Ban Meta by expanding the variety of styles and promoting retail sales. Online and offline Ray - Ban stores, Sunglass Hut, and LensCrafters all account for a large part of the sales of this product.

Public information shows that Essilor Luxottica has more than 200,000 employees, 650 production bases, and 18,000 stores in 150 countries around the world.

The users' focus on product functions also confirms that people are not that concerned about the "AI content" of Ray - Ban Meta.

The user survey data from wellsenn XR shows that the top three most - concerned functions are imaging (43%), audio (34%), and appearance (10%).

A survey by VR Gyro based on the Reddit overseas forum also shows that the number of posts by netizens sharing photos and videos taken with Ray - Ban Meta accounts for more than 60%, far exceeding other types of usage scenarios. Not many users are actively willing to share AI - related usage scenarios.

From this point of view, the popularity of Ray - Ban Meta actually has nothing to do with AI.

It has precisely leveraged the capabilities of the eyewear giant and found its product - market fit (PMF) in daily life and social scenarios such as audio and photography. The "snap - shot" and "first - person perspective recording" experiences brought by smart glasses make people feel that they are more convenient and efficient to use than mobile phones and action cameras.

However, another question arises: Can domestic players replicate the successful path of Ray - Ban Meta?

The key to the answer lies in two aspects:

On the eyewear side, can we produce a Chinese "Essilor Luxottica"? On the eyewear manufacturer side, can we find the key scenarios to support product implementation?

3. A Seemingly Prosperous New Curve

A recent post by technology blogger "Dianwan Technology AK", "No longer accepting any commercial orders for smart glasses products", has sparked industry discussions:

"Most domestic peers are just making advertising promotional videos." "In terms of technical routes, eyewear functions, and actual application scenarios, most domestic manufacturers are completely wrong and distorted." "The funds and personnel allocation are insufficient." AK said in the video.