As rival Meta makes big moves in the smart glasses field, apple is finally taking action.

According to the latest news, Apple's smart glasses development project has made new progress, with the project codenamed "Atlas" officially launched last week.

Apple's "Atlas" project has been launched.

Reports indicate that Apple is conducting internal research on smart glasses products currently available on the market. This project, with the codename "Atlas," was initiated last week, with the main task being to collect feedback from Apple employees on smart glasses.

This step is crucial for the development of Apple's smart glasses and may guide them in determining the features their glasses should have, as well as help clarify the application of related technologies.

Furthermore, sources also revealed that Apple plans to establish more focus groups soon, aiming to gain a deeper understanding of people's preferences for existing products, laying a solid foundation for venturing into this new product domain.

In fact, when Apple plans to launch a new product category, they often convene secret teams. Rather than collecting customer feedback, Apple prefers to gather information from employees to ensure the confidentiality of the plans.

Led by the product system quality team of the hardware engineering department of Apple Inc., the team wrote in an email to selected employees at the Cupertino headquarters in California, 'Testing and developing a product that everyone will love is very important for what we do at Apple, which is why we are looking for participants to join this research on current market smart glasses users.'

Although there have been previous reports of Apple considering developing smart glasses, this idea seems to be more mature within the company this time.

Given the bulky and expensive issues with the Vision Pro head-mounted device priced at $3,499 released in February, Apple is committed to creating a lighter weight augmented reality device, with smart glasses being one direction, this form of eyewear product is expected to achieve longer battery life, come equipped with more advanced sensors, and improved audio technology.

Apple is even considering shifting many functions and computational work to the iPhone, making smart glasses more of an accessory to existing consumer products.

Mark Gurman of Bloomberg wrote in Sunday's 'Power On' newsletter, 'I keep hearing about Apple seriously considering launching a device that shifts the computing components to the iPhone and serves as an accessory for watching movies.'

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo stated in a tweet on Sunday that Apple's only new head-mounted display device next year will be the Vision Pro with the new M5 chip, while a cheaper version will be postponed for release after 2027.

Meta has already launched the Orion AR glasses.

Currently, Apple's competitor Meta has made significant progress in the lighter head-mounted device field.

Meta has launched two smart glasses. The first generation is the Ray-Ban Meta, created in collaboration with the well-known eyewear brand Ray-Ban, first released in September 2023, and went on sale in October starting at $299.

The Ray-Ban Meta looks similar to regular sunglasses, but has rich functionality including taking photos and videos, playing music, answering calls, etc. It is equipped with Meta Llama 3 models, providing AI functions such as real-time translation and voice assistants.

However, since these glasses do not have a built-in display screen to overlay information on the lens, they are not considered true AR glasses. By abandoning the optical display module, they achieve a lighter weight and a more comfortable wearing experience.

According to The Verge's statistics, as of May 2024, global sales of the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses have exceeded 1 million units, with an expected annual shipment of over 1.5 million units in 2024.

At the Meta Connect conference in September this year, Meta showcased its first smart AR glasses, the "Orion", which is equipped with a Micro LED projector inside the frame, capable of displaying images in front of the user's eyes.

Meta says there is still a long way to go before the launch of Orion, but journalists who have tried the device are full of praise for its technology. After all, smart glasses are much lighter compared to full-head wearable devices.

In addition, the USA AR glasses technology company Snap also released a new generation of AR glasses Spectacles in the same month. At this stage, the product is not available for consumers to purchase, but only open for use by AR special effects creators at a price of $99 per month.

With the rise of the trend of artificial intelligence, smart glasses are gradually becoming a key form of AI hardware landing, especially promising to become an important carrier of universal multimodal AI assistants, bringing great imagination space to the market.

Currently, the industry generally believes that AR glasses have more growth prospects than AI glasses. AI glasses abandon complex optical display modules in pursuit of convenience and comfort, but this also leads to obvious shortcomings in immersive interaction and rich visual presentation.

According to Swarm Intelligence Consulting data, the global shipment volume of AR headsets in 2023 is about 0.5 million units. It is expected that in 2024, this number will significantly increase to 0.8 million units, with a year-on-year growth of about 63%.