A pair of Xiaomi AI Glasses costs less than half what Meta’s Ray-Ban Display commands in the US, and the Display has never reached Chinese shelves, so the two never meet head to head. Tight supply parked Meta’s European and Canadian plans in January as well.

Buyers are voting with their wallets anyway. Platform sales across the country ran at more than double last year’s pace through August, according to government data carried in Bloomberg’s September 20 coverage. IDC projects domestic shipments near 4.508 million units for 2026, a 77.7% rise.

Meta’s absent model is not the only gap. Xiaomi skips the in-lens display Meta uses, though its frames still carry a 12MP camera, 2K video at 30 frames per second and 8.6 hours of mixed use. Rokid’s alternative packs 49-gram frames, a 12MP camera, Micro LED waveguide displays and live translation, at roughly $100 above Alibaba’s nearest rival.

Globally the lead is still Meta’s. IDC’s second-quarter tracker hands it 68.7% of the wider market with no rival above 4%, and Omdia’s 2025 count gives it 85.2% of worldwide AI glasses.

Inside China the ordering flips entirely. Local names hold the top of every domestic tracker, a set of scoreboards that count the category differently from one another and leave the global leader far down the list.

Source: Startup Fortune