Latest news with #Ray-BanStories
New York Post
28-05-2025
- Business
- New York Post
Mark Zuckerberg planning several Meta retail locations after opening California store as ‘discover' space similar to Apple: report
Meta plans to open physical storefronts and hire retail employees in an effort to boost sales of its devices, according to a report. The company has been leading an ongoing project to expand its retail footprint, which currently includes just one store on its California campus, according to an internal communication obtained by Business Insider. The project is not widely known internally yet. Meta declined to comment. 3 Meta currently has just one retail store on its California campus. Getty Images The internal communication did not include details on how many stores Meta might open or when they might open. Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg's tech company opened Meta Store, its sole retail location, in Burlingame, California in 2022. It marketed the store as a space to 'discover' Meta products through interactive demos, much like Apple's retail locations, which allow users to test out iPhones and laptops in person. At the Meta Store, customers could try out Meta Portal, a video-calling device which is no longer sold; Ray-Ban Stories, better known as Meta's smart glasses; and Meta Quest, its virtual reality headset. Meta also opened a pop-up store in Los Angeles last year called Meta Lab that allowed customers to try out its smart glasses before making a purchase. According to Meta's website, the pop-up store is closed but will 'be back.' A larger retail footprint could help the company boost sales of its devices, a key focus among its executives. 3 A Meta Quest virtual reality headset on display in a Target store. Getty Images Meta sold more than 1 million pairs of smart glasses last year, which Zuckerberg called a 'great start' but admitted it's 'not going to move the needle and the business in a core way.' Meta's chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, wrote last year that the company is on a mission to 'drive sales, retention, and engagement,' with plans to launch more AI-powered wearable devices this year. While Apple's retail stores are an essential part of its sales strategy, other tech companies are only just beginning to expand their footprint. 3 Meta employees stand in the showroom during a media preview of the Meta Store in 2022. Getty Images Amazon, for example, has opened Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go stores across fewer than 10 states selling prepared foods, snacks and groceries. Some of these stores feature its Just Walk Out technology, which allows customers to exit the store using a payment method instead of having to scan their items in a checkout line. Amazon has already started to shutter some of these grocery storefronts and has shut down several unsuccessful retail ventures in the past. In 2023, it closed its two Amazon Style retail stores. The year before, it shuttered dozens of Amazon-owned bookstores.
Indian Express
23-04-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
Meta to bring flagship Ray-Ban AI glasses to India ‘soon' in global rollout expansion
The Ray Ban-Meta glasses will be coming to India soon, the company announced on Wednesday, April 23, without mentioning a specific date. The popular AI-powered smart glasses offer a hands-free experience to wearers who can ask questions on-the-go and receive real time information. 'These stylish glasses offer everyday wearability and help you be more present with friends, family, and the world around you by letting you capture a moment or listen to music, while your phone stays in your pocket,' the company said in a press release. The Ray-Ban Meta glasses will be made available in India almost two years after the tech giant launched its first-ever smart glasses (Ray-Ban Stories) in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, the company behind Ray-Ban. The next-generation Ray-Ban Meta glasses were launched in September 2023. Besides India, Meta said its smart glasses will also be rolled out in other countries including Mexico and the United Arab Emirates. 'We're also expanding access to Meta AI on Ray-Ban Meta glasses in even more countries in the EU today, and starting next week, we'll be rolling out the ability for you to ask Meta AI about the things you're looking at and get real-time responses to all our supported countries in the EU,' the company said. Furthermore, Meta announced that its flagship smart glasses are now available in a new Skyler Shiny Chalky Gray with Transitions Sapphire lenses. In terms of software upgrades, the company said it is rolling out the live translation feature globally to all markets. This feature allows wearers to hold seamless conversations across English, French, Italian, and Spanish by hearing what their conversation partner is saying in their preferred language through the glasses in real time. It also works without WiFi or network connectivity as long as the language pack has been downloaded in advance. 'You'll also soon be able to send and receive direct messages, photos, audio calls, and video calls from Instagram on your glasses,' Meta said. Access to a feature that lets wearers ask Meta AI to play music through Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Shazam is being expanded to countries outside the US and Canada. This feature also gives users the ability to ask Meta AI for information about the music they are listening to, the company added. Vision capabilities of the AI-powered smart glasses are also being made available in the US and Canada.
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Tim Cook ‘cares about nothing else' product-wise other than beating Mark Zuckerberg to a pair of truly smart glasses
and Meta have been pouring significant capital into augmented reality 'smart glasses.' One source told Bloomberg that Tim Cook reportedly 'cares about nothing else' from a product development standpoint. If he can beat Mark Zuckerberg to a pair of stylish smart glasses that make an impact in the market, he might just beat the accusations he doesn't have the same panache for groundbreaking products as his predecessor, Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. While the iPhone accounts for roughly 56% of Apple's revenue, according to its quarterly earnings report released in January, the company's CEO Tim Cook is hot for augmented reality, the technology that underpins the not-nearly-as-popular $3,500 Vision Pro headset. (Production on the Vision Pro reportedly halted in January amid slow demand.) In fact, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, a longtime Apple reporter with deep connections inside the company, Cook is "hell-bent" on creating a pair of truly smart glasses before Mark Zuckerberg can at Meta. A source with knowledge of the matter told Gurman, 'Tim cares about nothing else. 'It's the only thing he's really spending his time on from a product development standpoint,' the person said. After years of teasing, Apple finally released the Vision Pro in February 2024. The headset offers both virtual and augmented reality experiences: Thanks to an array of cameras on the device that point outward, as well as cameras that track your eye movements inside the goggles, it can appear as if virtual and digital elements exist in your real environment that you can interact with (that's augmented reality), but you can also enjoy complete immersion in realistic virtual environments (virtual reality). While great for watching movies in virtual environments (like the surface of the moon), it's also a capable work device, since it can mirror what you're doing on your Mac computer(s). Meta, meanwhile, has been working on VR and AR technologies for quite a long time. Facebook acquired Palmer Luckey's Oculus VR for $2 billion in 2014 and released its first consumer VR headset, the Oculus Rift, two years later in 2016. Meta began laying the groundwork for AR experiences as early as 2017, but its hardware plans really took shape when in 2021 it released Ray-Ban Stories, a pair of smart glasses with cameras and audio built-in. Last year it unveiled a pair of augmented reality smart glasses called Orion that blew several journalists away, but those are still in development. Zuckerberg previously said Apple and Meta have a 'very deep, philosophical competition' in AR and VR, since Apple's approach involves a tight integration of hardware and software (as it does with all its devices), whereas Meta's vision revolves around a device-agnostic experience so its software can live on different types of VR and AR devices, including those not made by Meta. The Meta CEO believes the 'metaverse' will be the successor to the mobile internet, where your virtual avatars can move between platforms for work, play, and of course, socializing. (Investors, meanwhile, haven't been as thrilled with how much money Meta has been pouring into the metaverse.) Zuckerberg, however, is a major proponent of the technologies. He notably shared a three-minute review of Apple's Vision Pro on Instagram shortly after its debut, but, as you might expect, he mostly criticized the device and used it as an opportunity to advertise Meta's Quest 3 headset, saying his company's device is lighter and cheaper. But the video highlighted the competitive nature between the two companies on this emerging technology. Basically, both Apple and Meta are racing to make their devices' form factors smaller and more powerful until they finally achieve a hardware product that looks like a normal pair of glasses, albeit much more high-tech. Cook has been hot on the potential of augmented reality for most of his tenure at Apple—and has been a vocal advocate for the technology, on the record, for roughly a decade. In a quarterly earnings call in July 2016, Cook said 'we are high on AR for the long run,' while mentioning the success of Pokémon Go, the hottest mobile game at that time that relied heavily on augmented reality tech. Later that year while appearing at Utah Tech Tour, Cook said he predicted 'a significant portion of the population of developed countries' to have AR experiences 'every day, almost like eating three meals a day, it will become that much a part of you.' 'Few people in here think it's acceptable to be tethered to a computer,' he said. 'We're all social people at heart. Even introverts are social people,' adding, 'AR will become really big.' Over the years, Cook mentioned how he was 'incredibly excited by AR' because he could 'see uses for it everywhere.' 'I can see uses for it in education, in consumers, in entertainment, in sports. I can see it in every business that I know anything about,' he said at a 2017 event hosted by the University of Oxford. While Cook has made Apple more successful than the company has ever been from a financial standpoint, the Vision Pro is one of the few original hardware products launched during his tenure as CEO, so it makes sense that it's one of his sole focuses "from a product development standpoint," as Bloomberg's source told Gurman. Steve Jobs, Cook's predecessor and Apple's cofounder, was considered a "visionary," however, having a major hand in designing and launching Apple's most iconic products including the iPod, iPhone, iPad, Mac (desktop and laptop configurations, including the wildly popular MacBook Air), and getting the deals done to make the iTunes Store possible. (Music streaming as an industry may not have come to pass without it.) Cook was Apple's COO under Jobs: He was considered an operations expert and a key to making Apple's supply chain in Asia a profitable enterprise. But when Jobs died in 2011, many questioned Cook's ability to shape landmark products in the same way Jobs could. The Apple Watch and AirPods have been major successes under Cook, but other products like the HomePod or AirTags haven't created as much hype. On the contrary, those products may have generated undesirable publicity. And with Apple reportedly canceling its plans for a car, Cook is likely feeling more pressure for such a costly investment as the Vision Pro to succeed. Both Apple and Meta are spending a significant chunk of change on research and development, which is key to getting these AR-powered goggles small enough to look like a stylish pair of high-tech glasses. Apple allocated $31.4 billion to R&D in 2024, a nearly 5% increase from the year before, while Meta earmarked a whopping $43.9 billion to R&D last year, a 14% jump from the year prior. This story was originally featured on
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Tim Cook ‘cares about nothing else' product-wise other than beating Mark Zuckerberg to a pair of truly smart glasses
and Meta have been pouring significant capital into augmented reality 'smart glasses.' One source told Bloomberg that Tim Cook reportedly 'cares about nothing else' from a product development standpoint. If he can beat Mark Zuckerberg to a pair of stylish smart glasses that make an impact in the market, he might just beat the accusations he doesn't have the same panache for groundbreaking products as his predecessor, Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. While the iPhone accounts for roughly 56% of Apple's revenue, according to its quarterly earnings report released in January, the company's CEO Tim Cook is hot for augmented reality, the technology that underpins the not-nearly-as-popular $3,500 Vision Pro headset. (Production on the Vision Pro reportedly halted in January amid slow demand.) In fact, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, a longtime Apple reporter with deep connections inside the company, Cook is "hell-bent" on creating a pair of truly smart glasses before Mark Zuckerberg can at Meta. A source with knowledge of the matter told Gurman, 'Tim cares about nothing else. 'It's the only thing he's really spending his time on from a product development standpoint,' the person said. After years of teasing, Apple finally released the Vision Pro in February 2024. The headset offers both virtual and augmented reality experiences: Thanks to an array of cameras on the device that point outward, as well as cameras that track your eye movements inside the goggles, it can appear as if virtual and digital elements exist in your real environment that you can interact with (that's augmented reality), but you can also enjoy complete immersion in realistic virtual environments (virtual reality). While great for watching movies in virtual environments (like the surface of the moon), it's also a capable work device, since it can mirror what you're doing on your Mac computer(s). Meta, meanwhile, has been working on VR and AR technologies for quite a long time. Facebook acquired Palmer Luckey's Oculus VR for $2 billion in 2014 and released its first consumer VR headset, the Oculus Rift, two years later in 2016. Meta began laying the groundwork for AR experiences as early as 2017, but its hardware plans really took shape when in 2021 it released Ray-Ban Stories, a pair of smart glasses with cameras and audio built-in. Last year it unveiled a pair of augmented reality smart glasses called Orion that blew several journalists away, but those are still in development. Zuckerberg previously said Apple and Meta have a 'very deep, philosophical competition' in AR and VR, since Apple's approach involves a tight integration of hardware and software (as it does with all its devices), whereas Meta's vision revolves around a device-agnostic experience so its software can live on different types of VR and AR devices, including those not made by Meta. The Meta CEO believes the 'metaverse' will be the successor to the mobile internet, where your virtual avatars can move between platforms for work, play, and of course, socializing. (Investors, meanwhile, haven't been as thrilled with how much money Meta has been pouring into the metaverse.) Zuckerberg, however, is a major proponent of the technologies. He notably shared a three-minute review of Apple's Vision Pro on Instagram shortly after its debut, but, as you might expect, he mostly criticized the device and used it as an opportunity to advertise Meta's Quest 3 headset, saying his company's device is lighter and cheaper. But the video highlighted the competitive nature between the two companies on this emerging technology. Basically, both Apple and Meta are racing to make their devices' form factors smaller and more powerful until they finally achieve a hardware product that looks like a normal pair of glasses, albeit much more high-tech. Cook has been hot on the potential of augmented reality for most of his tenure at Apple—and has been a vocal advocate for the technology, on the record, for roughly a decade. In a quarterly earnings call in July 2016, Cook said 'we are high on AR for the long run,' while mentioning the success of Pokémon Go, the hottest mobile game at that time that relied heavily on augmented reality tech. Later that year while appearing at Utah Tech Tour, Cook said he predicted 'a significant portion of the population of developed countries' to have AR experiences 'every day, almost like eating three meals a day, it will become that much a part of you.' 'Few people in here think it's acceptable to be tethered to a computer,' he said. 'We're all social people at heart. Even introverts are social people,' adding, 'AR will become really big.' Over the years, Cook mentioned how he was 'incredibly excited by AR' because he could 'see uses for it everywhere.' 'I can see uses for it in education, in consumers, in entertainment, in sports. I can see it in every business that I know anything about,' he said at a 2017 event hosted by the University of Oxford. While Cook has made Apple more successful than the company has ever been from a financial standpoint, the Vision Pro is one of the few original hardware products launched during his tenure as CEO, so it makes sense that it's one of his sole focuses "from a product development standpoint," as Bloomberg's source told Gurman. Steve Jobs, Cook's predecessor and Apple's cofounder, was considered a "visionary," however, having a major hand in designing and launching Apple's most iconic products including the iPod, iPhone, iPad, Mac (desktop and laptop configurations, including the wildly popular MacBook Air), and getting the deals done to make the iTunes Store possible. (Music streaming as an industry may not have come to pass without it.) Cook was Apple's COO under Jobs: He was considered an operations expert and a key to making Apple's supply chain in Asia a profitable enterprise. But when Jobs died in 2011, many questioned Cook's ability to shape landmark products in the same way Jobs could. The Apple Watch and AirPods have been major successes under Cook, but other products like the HomePod or AirTags haven't created as much hype. On the contrary, those products may have generated undesirable publicity. And with Apple reportedly canceling its plans for a car, Cook is likely feeling more pressure for such a costly investment as the Vision Pro to succeed. Both Apple and Meta are spending a significant chunk of change on research and development, which is key to getting these AR-powered goggles small enough to look like a stylish pair of high-tech glasses. Apple allocated $31.4 billion to R&D in 2024, a nearly 5% increase from the year before, while Meta earmarked a whopping $43.9 billion to R&D last year, a 14% jump from the year prior. This story was originally featured on
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses go high fashion with Coperni limited edition
Meta delivered an unexpected runaway success with its Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses, and now, it is headed to the runaway for the latest take. At the Paris Fashion week, the company lifted the covers from the Ray-Ban Meta x Coperni Limited Edition Glasses. Revealed as part of Coperni's Fall Winter 25 collection, these are the company's 'first-ever fashion-branded collaboration.' The collaboration product borrows Ray-Ban's iconic Wayfarer look and gives it a translucent twist atop a black-grey framework. Taking inspiration from its limited-run transparent editions that were introduced last year, the Coperni version also goes for a translucent look with the frame, marrying them with grey mirrored lenses. And for that final branded touch, there's a prominent Coperni logo on the arm. If you like the look on these new smart glasses, you'll need some luck and a deeper pocket. Only 3,600 units of the Ray-Ban Meta x Coperni Limited Edition smart glasses will be put on the shelves, starting Monday. Moreover, they cost more than the regular Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which start at $299 in the US. For the Coperni edition, you'll have to part ways with $549 for each pair. Sales kick off at 1AM (PDT) / 9AM (CET) on Monday via Meta, Ray-Ban, and Coperni's online stores. Aside from their stylish looks, the biggest draw of these glasses is an upgraded 12-megapixel sensor that can capture pictures at 3024 x 4032 pixels resolution, while videos are recorded at 1440 x 1920 pixels resolution with 30fps frame rate. The onboard 32GB storage can save over 500 photos and roughly a hundred 30-second clips, while the battery is touted to last roughly four hours per charge. These glasses can also be used for video calling as well as live-streaming. The most underrated aspect of these smart glasses, however, is the onboard Meta AI. Users can ask it to scan QR codes in the camera's field of view, translate text, recognize objects and music (via Shazam), offer historical details about monuments, note down information for a future recall, and more. With a natural language voice command, these glasses can also find and play content from Spotify and Amazon Music via the onboard speakers. There's also a live translation feature, alongside a real-time translation system for four languages viz. English, French, Italian, and Spanish. The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are targeted at social media posting and getting the best out of Meta AI on a less compute-intensive platform. The company is also working on the Orion smart glasses with a holographic display and the Aria Gen 2 glasses with capabilities like heart rate sensing for research-related work.
