Apple’s first smart glasses could arrive in the next two years
Apple’s custom chip should enter mass production in time to power Apple’s smart glasses to compete with Meta’s upcoming AR spectacles in 2027.
Apple is rumored to be working on its first smart glasses with built-in cameras and microphones for tapping into Siri and visual intelligence that would rival Meta’s Ray-Bans. The project seems to have entered a new phase of development as a custom chip for the glasses is reportedly in development and will enter mass production in 2026 or 2027, according to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg. If this is true, then Apple’s first smart glasses could drop in the next two years or so.
Apple needs an answer to Meta’s first true spectacles that should be ready by 2027. Apple’s glasses are expected to have multiple cameras, so recording spatial video could be among the features. Visual intelligence, Apple’s Google Lens-like feature in Apple Intelligence, will reportedly rely on the cameras integrated into the glasses to describe objects in the viewfinder and provide navigation directions.
Apple’s first non-AR smart glasses might drop in 2027
Gurman has learned that Apple’s semiconductor design team run by executive Johny Srouji has been tasked with the development of new bespoke chips to power upcoming gadgets like future earbuds, smartwatches, smart glasses, more powerful Macs and artificial intelligence servers.
“The company has made progress on the chip that it’s developing for smart glasses,” he wrote. “The move indicates that Apple is ramping up work on such a device.”
Gurman went on to explain that the glasses chip is based on the in-house designed Apple Watch processors, which are more power efficient than the chips that run in the iPhone, iPad and Mac. “The chip has been customized to remove some parts in order to further improve power efficiency,“ according to Gurman. Sounds like Apple’s glasses will use a binned Apple Watch chip for the glasses.
Binning is an industry term for separating chips into groups based on their quality or performance to maximize production yields. Some of the chips could have issues due to manufacturing variances and other factors. Underperforming parts, like a GPU or CPU core, are simply disabled so that the chip can be sold as a lesser-quality product. For example, the iPhone 13 runs Apple’s six-core A15 chip while the latest Apple TV 4K uses a binned variant of the chip with one CPU core disabled.
How Apple’s glasses might utilize onboard cameras
“The processor is also being designed to control the multiple cameras that are planned for the glasses.” That would be similar to the Vision Pro headset, which uses two main custom chips. One is your everyday system-on-a-chip providing compute, graphics and other functions, while the other is a coprocessor solely dedicated to interpreting data from onboard cameras and sensors.
Apple’s smart glasses could integrate cameras to scan the environment and describe objects, look up information about products and provide directions, but they won’t have any augmented reality (AR) functions.
Instead, the glasses have standard features found on smart glasses from Meta and other companies, including playing music, making phone calls, displaying notifications, snapping photographs, recording video, offering translation, talking to the Siri assistant and more.
An Apple-branded augmented reality glasses that would superimpose media, notifications and apps over real-world views are still years away. However, Apple’s hardware division already researched the idea with engineers last year. Both non-AR and AR glasses are being developed under the codename N401, Gurman has it.
Chips for camera-equipped AirPods and Apple Watch
As for other chips, Gurman says that a custom silicon for a future camera-equipped Apple Watch is allegedly codenamed “Nevis”. Meanwhile, a chip that will power a camera-equipped Apple Watch is referred to internally as “Glenni.” Gurman claims that Apple is aiming to have those chips ready by around 2027. In other words, don’t hold your breath for camera-equipped earbuds and watches in 2025 or 2026.
The Cupertino tech giant is also working on chips for in-house designed servers that run complex Apple Intelligence models which cannot run on-device, Gurman said.
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