Will smart glasses become the next smart speaker?

In April 2018, Baidu led the Series C financing of Xiaoyu Zaijia. This was a decision made by Baidu after two years of cooperation with Xiaoyu Zaijia. At CES 2017 just one year apart, Baidu had also collaborated with Xiaoyu Zaijia to launch a smart speaker product with a screen powered by DuerOS.

After that, Baidu even acquired this smart speaker team to embrace the battle of smart speakers among tech giants.

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

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

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.

By then, the once - top three domestic smart speaker giants - Baidu, Alibaba, and Xiaomi - had all entered the smart glasses market, and the departments in charge of smart glasses were also the ones that had previously handled 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 27th. 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 some differences this time.

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

First, the change in the structural design of the glasses.

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 quite common nowadays.

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 temple legs.

This time, Quark has made some differences in the temple structure. It adopted 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 back of the temple legs.

The advantage of this is that it can slightly improve the problem of the temple legs 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 due to the change in the structural design of the glasses and the compression of the battery as a counterweight into the temple legs, the Quark Smart Glasses have a battery - swapping mode.

If I remember correctly, Quark has made the end of the right temple leg 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 comparison, the battery capacity of Rokid Glasses, which also uses binocular diffractive waveguide, is 210mAh, and the battery capacity of Thunderbird V3, another AI photo - taking glasses without display function, is 159mAh.

Based on our previous experience of using smart glasses:

With such a battery capacity, if you wear it for daily use and try to avoid using power - hungry functions such as video shooting and navigation, it can last for about 5 - 6 hours. If you use the video shooting function continuously, it can only last for 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 drops to 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 aspect.

Since most smart glasses are currently 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 shot by smart glasses can be used.

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

It's worth mentioning that Quark is no longer the Quark that used to focus on 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 Is Now Carried by 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 oversee all matters of the Smart Interconnection department.

This was the year when the domestic smart speaker market, after experiencing a period of intense competition and being divided by three Internet giants, reached its peak and started to decline.

IDC released 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 volatile market situation that Tmall Genie, one of the three smart speaker giants, underwent several rounds of organizational structure adjustments this year. Finally, after the smart speaker boom faded, it was integrated into the Quark system along with the Smart Interconnection department.

According to a report in "Intelligent Emergence" at the beginning of this year, citing an insider, the Smart Interconnection Business Group is now under the 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 teams are working on is smart glasses.

In a series of organizational structure adjustments of Tmall Genie and the Quark team this year, we've seen a series of greater changes:

First, Peng Chao, the former president of Smart Interconnection and also the leader of Tmall Genie, chose to leave and start his own business. The Cloud Jue Technology he founded is also working on the direction of wearable devices + intelligent agents;

Second, after the merger of Tmall Genie and the Quark team, in the new round of the smart glasses battle among giants, Alibaba has switched to the Quark team to take the lead;

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

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

From this series of adjustments, we can see that after the C - end (including software and hardware) has become the main data entry point for large models, Alibaba is re - integrating internal resources and increasing 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 noting that when facing every disruptive technological change, giants are always anxious about not being left behind in 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 Internet industry change, including the battle between Didi and Kuaidi in the ride - hailing market, the battle between Meituan and Ele.me in the food - delivery 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.

Now, in the field of smart glasses, the battle among giants is happening again.

03 Xiaomi and Baidu Are Also in the Game

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

The reason lies in Xiaomi's three characteristics. First, the existence of Xiaomi's ecological chain as a special group. Second, smartphone manufacturers' pursuit of a full - scenario ecosystem. Third, Xiaomi's logic of pursuing blockbuster products in hardware manufacturing.

Around 2022, Hive 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 focusing on the photo - taking function.

This pair of smart glasses, which was somewhat similar to OPPO's Air Glass released in 2021, was very popular that year. However, due to the lack of technological maturity and the overly unique product form, Hive Technology later shifted its focus to smart audio glasses. It successively released MIJIA Smart Audio Glasses and Jiehuan AI Audio Glasses.

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

Xiaomi first announced two concept smart glasses. One was the Xiaomi Smart Glasses Exploration Edition shown 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 editions. It became an AI glasses without display function.