By Metaverse Watcher staff | Published October 25, 2026
The race to supply the screens inside AR glasses is heating up, and South Korea’s two display giants are trying to catch up. Samsung Display and LG Display are both developing microdisplays built on OLED-on-silicon (OLEDoS) and LED-on-silicon (LEDoS) technology, according to reports this month from Maeil Business News Korea’s Pulse and Edaily. The problem for both companies is simple: the market’s biggest buyer, Meta, currently gets its display parts elsewhere.
Why the AR glasses display market matters now
The demand side is finally moving. Market research firm TrendForce projects global AR glasses shipments will more than double, from 620,000 units in 2025 to 1.31 MILLION in 2026, with Meta taking roughly 20 percent of shipments on the strength of its Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses. XREAL, Rokid, RayNeo and Even Realities together are expected to hold a combined 53.2 percent share. We covered those forecast numbers in detail in our TrendForce shipments report.
Edaily, also citing TrendForce, reports a further increase of about 80 percent expected in 2027 and a long-range forecast of 32.11 million AR glasses units by 2030, roughly 24.5 times this year’s estimate. Forecasts that far out deserve skepticism, but they explain why panel makers are spending money on a product category that still ships in the low millions.
Who supplies the displays today
Right now, the displays in the best-known glasses come from the United States, China and Japan, not Korea:
- Meta Ray-Ban Display uses liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) from U.S.-based OmniVision. LCoS reflects light from a separate light source off a liquid crystal layer.
- Meta Orion, the company’s true AR prototype, uses LEDoS panels from China’s JBD.
- XREAL One Pro and some other XREAL glasses use micro-OLED panels from Japan’s Sony.
Omdia estimates that Chinese and Japanese companies will hold more than 90 PERCENT of the OLEDoS market this year. For Samsung Display and LG Display, which dominate large OLED panels for phones and TVs, that is an unusual position to be in.
What Samsung Display is building
Samsung Display is developing RGB OLEDoS for AR glasses. The RGB approach produces color directly from red, green and blue emitters instead of white OLED behind color filters, which improves light efficiency and color reproduction. Both matter for glasses that need to be readable outdoors on a small battery.
At AWE USA 2026 in June, Samsung Display showed a 1.3-inch RGB OLEDoS panel with peak brightness of 40,000 nits, along with prototype smart glasses using a 0.62-inch OLEDoS panel that demonstrated live translation, navigation and weather information, according to Edaily and Pulse. Samsung Display bought U.S. microdisplay maker eMagin in 2023 and set up a dedicated team for OLEDoS and LEDoS work. Edaily reports the company is making pilot investments with the goal of mass production within the next few years.
There is also an in-house customer. In September, The Elec reported that Samsung Electronics had asked Samsung Display to develop a microdisplay smaller than 0.2 inch for its first AI glasses with a color display, with a launch expected in the second half of 2027 or the first half of 2028. Our earlier coverage is here. Samsung’s first Android XR glasses, expected first, do not have a display at all; see our report on the 41-gram Gentle Monster and Warby Parker frames.
LG Display’s more cautious approach
LG Display unveiled a 0.42-inch OLEDoS panel for AR glasses in 2023 and, in 2024, reached 10,000 nits in an OLEDoS panel for VR by adding micro lens array (MLA) technology. Edaily reports that LG Display is taking a cautious stance and considers a production line dedicated only to AR glasses hard to justify until profitability is clear. It is still developing the technology.
What it means
The display is the most expensive and hardest part to get right in see-through AR glasses. It sets brightness, color, battery life and, in large part, weight. Meta’s choice of LCoS for Ray-Ban Display and LEDoS for Orion shows the industry has not settled on one approach, which leaves a real opening for new suppliers.
For Samsung and LG, the path to that opening runs through yield and cost, not just record brightness numbers on a trade show floor. A 40,000-nit demo panel is impressive, but supplier deals for consumer glasses depend on producing small panels cheaply and consistently. Until either company announces a customer beyond Samsung’s own glasses, the Korean display push remains a bet on where the market is going rather than a change in who supplies it today.
For buyers, the practical takeaway is that brighter, lighter display glasses with full color are coming, but most of the hardware on store shelves in 2026 still uses panels from OmniVision, JBD, Sony and other established suppliers. If you are shopping now, our best smart glasses of 2026 guide covers what is actually available.