TrendForce now EXPECTS global AR glasses shipments to MORE THAN DOUBLE this year, from 620,000 units in 2025 to 1.31 MILLION in 2026, a gain of 111.1% year over year. The Oct. 15 release, drawn from its 2026 Near-Eye Display Market Trends and Technology Analysis report, CREDITS Meta’s Ray-Ban Display for “stronger-than-expected growth momentum” that pulled consumer ATTENTION toward the WHOLE category. The more interesting number is the one Meta does NOT own: the FIRM puts Meta at ONLY about 20% of 2026 shipments.
Meta Leads, but Four Rivals Ship More Combined
TrendForce says Meta will “maintain its lead” in 2026 at roughly 20% share. The NEXT four brands, XREAL, Even Realities, Rokid and RayNeo, are projected at 53.2% COMBINED. That leaves about 26.8% for EVERYONE else, by our SUBTRACTION. TrendForce frames the four as beneficiaries of Meta’s “spillover effects,” RACING to capture EARLY buyers “before other technology giants fully enter the market.”
The firm also sketches each rival’s LANE: XREAL in entertainment and media glasses, Even Realities in lightweight information-display frames, and Rokid and RayNeo with broader portfolios for different use cases. It does NOT publish per-brand unit counts or INDIVIDUAL shares, so the ORDER inside that 53.2% block is unknown.
Why This Does Not Contradict the 81% Headlines
Readers will remember a VERY different Meta number. Omdia counted 4.2 million AI glasses in the first half of 2026 and gave Meta 81.3% of them, as MIXED reported and we covered. BOTH figures can hold because they measure DIFFERENT baskets. Omdia’s count is DOMINATED by camera-and-audio frames such as Ray-Ban Meta. TrendForce is COUNTING AR glasses, and a full-year total of 1.31 million is FAR smaller than Omdia’s half-year 4.2 million. TrendForce’s release does not define the category, but the scale only makes sense if most DISPLAY-LESS frames sit outside it. That reading is our INFERENCE, not a TrendForce statement.
The new forecast FITS better with Counterpoint’s display-enabled slice, where Rokid says it ranked FIRST with 41% of H1 2026 shipments as that segment JUMPED 449% year over year (our report). It also UPGRADES TrendForce’s own August view that shipments would “surpass 1 million units” in 2026, per a TrendForce news note. The broader trend is the same one IDC showed in Q2: GLASSES, not HEADSETS, now carry XR VOLUME.
The Display Engine Fight Behind the Units
The supply-chain section may MATTER MORE than the brand table. TrendForce expects OLEDoS (micro-OLED) and LEDoS (micro-LED) to TAKE about 80% of the market COMBINED. OLEDoS keeps a SLIGHT lead because entertainment glasses use it WIDELY, but its reach into other categories is LIMITED. TrendForce says OLEDoS developers are now revisiting MONOCHROME green configurations to break into information-display glasses, looking for an OUTLET for “substantial production capacity expected to come online.”
LEDoS remains the KEY engine for LIGHTWEIGHT information-display glasses, but TrendForce calls full color “a significant technical challenge in the near term.” SUPPLIERS are working on DUAL-color red-and-green panels as a STOPGAP to improve READABILITY. LCoS adoption, MEANWHILE, is GROWING “through Meta’s products.” Taken together, TrendForce argues, brands get MORE technology options and more room to manage COST.
2027 and What the Release Leaves Out
TrendForce projects shipments to grow by “nearly 80%” in 2027. Applied to 1.31 million, that implies ROUGHLY 2.3 million units, which is our ARITHMETIC; TrendForce did NOT state a 2027 total. Taiwan’s Commercial Times carried the same figures and named lens maker Genius Electronic Optical (3406) as a possible BENEFICIARY, which is the paper’s framing, not TrendForce’s. Korea’s Dailian and LEDinside also ran the numbers.
GAPS remain. The public release gives NO per-brand units, NO regional split, NO price bands and NO DEFINITION of what qualifies as AR glasses. WITHOUT those, the 20% Meta figure is best read as a DIRECTIONAL signal: display glasses are a market where Meta is the LARGEST single vendor but NOT the dominant one. That is a sharp CONTRAST with camera glasses, and a reason to WATCH the Chinese brands before larger PLATFORM companies arrive.
Sources
- TrendForce press release, Oct. 15, 2026
- TrendForce, “The Second Half of the AR Glasses Race Begins,” Aug. 18, 2026
- LEDinside (Chinese), Oct. 15, 2026
- Commercial Times (CTEE), Oct. 15, 2026
- Dailian, Oct. 15, 2026
- MIXED on Omdia 1H26 AI glasses data
- Rokid / PR Newswire on Counterpoint H1 2026 data
- Wikimedia Commons photo by Xuthoria (CC BY-SA 4.0)