Will smart glasses become the next smart speaker?

In April 2018, Baidu led the Series C financing of Xiaoyu Zaijia. This was Baidu's decision after two years of cooperation with Xiaoyu Zaijia. At CES 2017 just one year apart, Baidu and Xiaoyu Zaijia had jointly launched a smart speaker product with a screen powered by DuerOS.

After that, Baidu acquired this smart speaker team to face the smart speaker battle among tech giants.

Several years later, a similar scenario played out again, but this time, the protagonist was Alibaba.

In January 2025, Alibaba reached a strategic cooperation with TCL Thunderbird Innovation. Alibaba's Tongyi series of large models began to provide technical support for TCL Thunderbird Innovation, thus entering the smart glasses field.

Not long ago, Quark, a subsidiary of Alibaba, officially launched the Quark Smart Glasses. During the pre - sale period of Double Eleven, more than 6,000 units were sold on Alibaba's Taoxi platform.

At this time, the former three giants of the domestic smart speaker market - Baidu, Alibaba, and Xiaomi - have all entered the smart glasses market, and the departments in charge of smart glasses are also the ones that were previously in charge of smart speakers.

So, will smart glasses become the next smart speakers?

01 What's Different about the Newcomer Quark?

Quark officially released the Smart Glasses S1 on November 27. Judging from the information released at the official press conference and the media review videos that have been launched recently, Quark's smart glasses have indeed brought something different this time.

As we understand, the Quark Smart Glasses team has made differentiations in the following three aspects:

First, the change in the glasses' structural design.

In the past, the smart glasses launched by several domestic AR glasses teams have always been criticized for their thick frames. The phenomenon of smart glasses "pinching the head" is now quite common.

There are exceptions. Some AI audio glasses on the market can already be as slender as ordinary glasses. However, when it comes to smart glasses with shooting functions, especially those with display functions, most of them can't escape the fate of thick - framed temples.

Quark has made some differences in the temple structure this time. It adopts a design similar to VR glasses, which places the battery as a counterweight at the back end. The battery counterweight of the smart glasses is placed at the rear of the temples.

The advantage of this is that it can slightly improve the problem of the temples pinching the head. Of course, Quark has not completely solved this problem. After all, the actual weight of about 50 grams still remains.

Second, the replaceable battery solution.

Also because of the change in the glasses' structural design and the compression of the battery as a counterweight into the temples, the Quark Smart Glasses have a battery - swapping mode.

If I remember correctly, Quark has made the end of the right temple detachable. The detachable part is a 40mAh battery.

So, when the glasses are almost out of power, you can pull out this 40mAh temple battery and replace it with another spare battery.

Speaking of which, the total battery capacity of this smart glasses is 240mAh. With this detachable battery, the total battery capacity is 280mAh.

For a set of comparison data, the battery capacity of Rokid Glasses, which also uses binocular diffractive waveguide, is 210mAh, and the battery capacity of TCL Thunderbird V3, another AI photo - taking glasses without a display function, is 159mAh.

Based on our previous experience of using smart glasses:

With such a battery capacity, if you wear it daily and try to avoid using heavy - duty functions such as video shooting and navigation, it can last about 5 - 6 hours. If you use the video shooting function continuously, it can only last about 1 hour.

So, if I want to use this pair of glasses as my main glasses, I will replace this detachable battery, which only accounts for 15% of the total capacity, when the battery level of the glasses drops by about 30% - 50%, so that the battery can always be kept above 50% to support the normal use of core functions.

This battery - swapping solution will definitely be a good way out for short - video bloggers when using such devices. However, it remains to be seen whether ordinary consumers can accept frequent battery swapping.

Third, the stability of video shooting.

It cannot be denied that even with the display function, shooting is still the main selling point of current smart glasses. The image distortion and video shooting stability of previous smart glasses have always been problems. This time, Quark has spent some effort on this.

Since most current smart glasses are equipped with wide - angle cameras, image distortion is inevitable when taking pictures. Quark has added two clever algorithms for optimization:

One is to add a focusing function in terms of function. Lightly touch the photo - taking button to focus first, find the center point of the picture, and then take a photo.

The second is to add a distortion correction algorithm, which is also a standard operation for current smart glasses.

In terms of video shooting, Quark has added two anti - shake algorithms, EIS anti - shake and cloud - based AI anti - shake. Of course, even so, it still can't compare with mobile phones and stabilizers, but at least most of the videos taken by smart glasses can be used.

This is the change I've seen in the Quark Smart Glasses. Although it hasn't fundamentally solved the bottleneck problems of smart glasses, it has made good optimizations.

It's worth mentioning that Quark today is no longer the Quark that used to make cloud storage and browsers. Now, Quark's weight within Alibaba is even heavier than that of Tmall Genie back then.

02 Alibaba's To - C Flag, Handed over to Quark

In July 2022, Alibaba established a first - level department, Smart Interconnection.

At that time, Tmall Genie, which was upgraded to an independent business unit, along with other consumer - grade AIoT businesses, was incorporated into the Smart Interconnection department. Peng Chao, a former Huawei executive, was appointed as the president to coordinate all matters of the Smart Interconnection department.

This was the year when the domestic smart speaker market, after experiencing a hundred - flower - blooming period and being divided by three Internet giants, reached its peak and then declined.

IDC gave two representative statistical data this year:

First, Baidu, Alibaba, and Xiaomi accounted for 34.96%, 33.4%, and 27.2% of the domestic smart speaker market respectively. The three companies together accounted for more than 95% of the market share.

Second, the annual sales volume of the Chinese smart speaker market was 28.51 million units. Affected by the cyclical development of the market and the reduction of subsidies, the overall sales volume decreased by nearly a quarter.

It was in such a turbulent market situation that Tmall Genie, one of the three giants in the smart speaker market, underwent several rounds of structural adjustments this year. Finally, after the boom of smart speakers subsided, it was integrated into the Quark system along with the Smart Interconnection department.

According to a report by "Intelligent Emergence" citing an insider's information at the beginning of this year, the Smart Interconnection Business Group is under the overall management of Wu Jia, the president of the Smart Information Business Group. The Tmall Genie team has merged with the Quark product team, and what the two merged product teams are working on is smart glasses.

In a series of structural adjustments of the Tmall Genie and Quark teams this year, we've seen a series of greater changes behind them:

First, Peng Chao, the former president of Smart Interconnection and also the person - in - charge of Tmall Genie, chose to leave and start his own business. The Yunjue Technology he founded is also working in the direction of wearable devices + intelligent agents.

Second, after the merger of the Tmall Genie and Quark teams, in the new round of the smart glasses battle among giants, Alibaba has handed over the leadership to the Quark team.

Third, at the end of 2024, Alibaba split the Tongyi product team and incorporated it into the Smart Information Business Group. The former was at the same level as Quark, and later renamed and launched the Qianwen APP and Qianwen PC version.

Fourth, not long ago, the Quark C - plan was widely reported. Then, the Quark Browser launched a dialogue assistant, and the functions of the Qianwen APP were integrated into the Quark Browser.

From this series of adjustments, we've found that after the C - end (including software and hardware) has become the main data entry point for large models, Alibaba is re - integrating its internal resources and increasing its investment in the C - end. Among them, Quark is replacing Tmall Genie and becoming the leading brand for Alibaba in the C - end market.

It was also at this time that smart glasses became another consumer - grade hardware product that Alibaba entered the market to compete in after smart speakers.

It's worth mentioning that when facing every disruptive technological change, giants will be anxious about how not to be left behind by the new era. So, they often struggle with several rounds of decision - making internally - to do or not to do? If they do, how to do it?

Ultimately, these giants will participate in every major round of Internet industry changes, including the battle between Didi and Kuaidi in the ride - hailing market, the battle between Meituan and Ele.me in the group - buying market, the battle between Mobike and Ofo in the bike - sharing market, and so on.

Perhaps few people remember that Alibaba also participated in the smartphone battle. At that time, Alibaba Cloud, under the leadership of Wang Jian, developed the mobile operating system YunOS, which was installed on popular smartphones such as K - Touch and Meizu at that time.

And this time, the battle among giants is playing out again in the field of smart glasses.

03 Xiaomi and Baidu Have Also Joined

It seems inevitable for Xiaomi to enter the smart glasses market.

The reason for this lies in Xiaomi's three genes. One is the existence of Xiaomi's ecological chain, a special group. The second is that mobile phone manufacturers pursue a full - scenario ecosystem. The third is Xiaomi's logic of pursuing blockbuster products in hardware manufacturing.

Around 2022, Fengchao Technology, invested by Xiaomi, released a MiJia Glasses Camera. Although it's called a camera, it's actually a combination of a camera and glasses, which is the current smart glasses that mainly focus on the photo - taking function.

This pair of smart glasses, which was somewhat similar to the OPPO Air Glass released in 2021, was very popular at that time. However, due to the lack of technological maturity resulting in a too - unique product form, Fengchao Technology later shifted its focus to smart audio glasses mainly for audio, and successively released the MIJIA Smart Audio Glasses and the Jiehuan AI Audio Glasses.

Over the years, Xiaomi has also launched its own smart glasses.

Xiaomi first released two PPT - only smart glasses. One was the Xiaomi Smart Glasses Exploration Edition shown to the public in 2021, and the other was the Xiaomi Wireless AR Glasses Exploration Edition shown in 2023. Neither of them was mass - produced.

When the first - generation Xiaomi AI Glasses finally came out in 2025, it was completely different from the previous two exploration - edition products and became an AI glasses without a display function.