Chinese augmented reality (AR) start-up Rokid has a new pair of lightweight smart glasses that it says will allow it to go head-to-head with Meta Platforms, as it eyes profitability in 2025.
The Hangzhou-based company, founded by former Alibaba Group Holding employee Misa Zhu Mingming, on Monday announced the Rokid Glasses, its first AR glasses equipped with large language models (LLMs) - the technology that underpins intelligent chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT.
The glasses use Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen family of LLMs, marking the start-up's best effort yet to crack the consumer market, Zhu told the South China Morning Post. Alibaba owns the Post.
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With the new product, Rokid is entering the smart glasses market amid an explosion of fresh interest stemming from new capabilities introduced by generative AI. Facebook owner Meta has been one of the biggest beneficiaries with a smart glasses line it created with Ray-Ban.
In September, Meta also teased "the most advanced pair of AR glasses ever made", called Orion, but it said they are currently too expensive to mass produce for consumers. Those glasses are completely self-contained computers. Many lower-cost AR glasses, including earlier pairs made by Rokid, mirror the image from another device like a smartphone, connected via USB-C.
Misa Zhu Mingming, founder and CEO of Rokid, speaks at the launch event for its new AR glasses on Monday. Photo: Rokid alt=Misa Zhu Mingming, founder and CEO of Rokid, speaks at the launch event for its new AR glasses on Monday. Photo: Rokid>
"The AR technology part [of smart glasses] was ready three years ago, but we have been waiting for the AI part," Zhu said. "Now with the advancements in LLMs, it's time."
The company chose Alibaba's LLM - out of the dozens of viable options in China - because it has recently been raking highly in global performance benchmarks, he added.
For portable AR tech, though, significant hurdles remain. While voice-activated smart glasses are a matter of sticking in a small microphone and maybe a camera, compact AR displays remain much more complicated, as Meta's experience with its 98-gram Orion glasses shows.
Even if a product makes it to market, adoption is another question. Apple is reportedly ending production, at least temporarily, of the Vision Pro, a US$3,500 headset that weighs over 600 grams.
Rokid is taking a different approach that is gaining traction in China: using a less sophisticated display to show the minimum necessary information for tasks such as real-time translation, navigation, digital payments, messaging and taking photos.
The green monochrome display is similar to one used in the Even Realities G1. This helps the glasses stay lightweight, at 49 grams, and keeps costs down. The Rokid Glasses are priced at 2,499 yuan (US$345).
Like Even Realities, which is based in Shenzhen but does not sell in China, Rokid sees its new glasses as an everyday eyewear option for people already wearing glasses.
"This product is for everyone who wears glasses," Zhu said. "If you're already spending 1,000 or 2,000 yuan on glasses, why not invest a little more for something far more powerful?"
The Rokid Glasses start shipping in the first half of 2025. Photo: Rokid alt=The Rokid Glasses start shipping in the first half of 2025. Photo: Rokid>
The Rokid Glasses will start shipping in the first half of next year, and the company aims to sell hundreds of thousands of units, according to Zhu. Markets outside mainland China could account for as much as half of sales, he said.
China's AR industry is mostly occupied by start-ups, although tech giants such as Baidu and Xiaomi have also joined the fray. According to data from research firm IDC, China shipped a total of 262,000 AR headsets in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 154 per cent. Rokid ranked third with 18.4 per cent of the market, behind domestic rivals Xreal and TCL's RayNeo.
Zhu said it is "very likely" the company will turn profit next year, a decade after its founding. He expects "explosive growth" in the global AR industry in 2025, with the broader adoption of LLMs.
However, he noted that it might take another three to five years for the industry to come up with a product that can match developers' best expectations - i.e. achieving a balance between advanced spatial computing, wearability, and power consumption.
Rokid is also looking to expand business-to-business opportunities overseas. It sees a use case for its tech in museums, where visitors can use AR glasses to bring exhibits to life with animations.
More than 200 museums in mainland China are already Rokid clients, Zhu said, making the company the sole supplier to this niche market. It is now in talks with museums in Hong Kong, Southeast Asia and some Western countries, where the opportunity is 10 times larger than the domestic market.
"One thing is clear: next year will be very critical," Zhu said. "It is when supply chains, software, hardware, and ecosystems will intersect."
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright ? 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 2024. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
