Cameras, AI and more: Samsung reveals key details of its smart glasses for the first time

Samsung has officially revealed the details about its smart glasses for the first time with a senior executive providing an idea what to expect from the upcoming device. This signals that one of the world’s biggest tech companies is ready to challenge Meta's dominance in a market.

What Samsung has confirmed about its AI smart glasses

Speaking on the sidelines of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Jay Kim, Executive Vice President of Samsung's mobile business, told CNBC that the smart glasses will feature a built-in camera positioned at eye level. Further, these glasses will be connected to a paired smartphone, which will handle the heavy lifting, which includes processing the information captured by the camera and delivering quick responses.

According to Kim, the key goal is for AI to understand “where you’re looking” so it can feed that visual information to the phone. The phone then processes it and provides useful, contextual information in return. On the question of whether the glasses will include a built-in display, Kim noted that Samsung already makes other devices that can serve as screens when a display is needed.

When is Samsung launching its AI smart glasses

Kim said that Samsung is aiming to have “something for industry this year” while Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told CNBC earlier this week that the smart glasses will be released this year.

What makes this interesting that Samsung’s entry into smart glasses puts it in competition with Meta, whose Ray-Ban glasses currently hold an 82% share of the global smart glasses market, according to research firm Counterpoint. Other challengers, including Alibaba and Xreal, have also tried to make dent in Meta Glasses’ market.

Samsung, however, is bringing resources as it has been collaborating with Qualcomm and Google since 2023 on the operating system, chips and hardware for mixed-reality devices. Their first joint product — the Galaxy XR headset — launched last year, built on Google's Android XR operating system.

“Everybody talks about what the next AI device is. Glasses, obviously, is one of them and everybody's looking at it,” Kim was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, Amon said that since smart glasses sit “close to our eyes, close to our ears, close to our mouth”, it makes them ideal device for agentic AI experiences.

“The things users once did on their phones and laptops will shift to other devices like smart glasses,” Amon added.