China's AI-powered smart glasses take the world by storm: sales soar 87.1% to 2.46 million units in 2025
China's AI-powered smart glasses take the world by storm: sales soar 87.1% to 2.46 million units in 2025. When ordinary glasses become a portable supercomputer capable of translating speech, navigating routes and taking photos at a wave of the hand, the line between human and technology blurs. China's smart glasses are rapidly conquering the global market, changing how consumers interact with AI in everyday life and demonstrating the country's growing edge in wearable AI devices. 2.46 million units shipped in a year is not just a statistic – it is a signal: the era of personal AI has arrived, and it looks like a regular frame hiding incredible computing power inside. China, already a leader in smartphones and electric vehicles, is now rewriting the rules in the wearable electronics market, offering gadgets that could become as common as smartwatches in the coming years.
In 2025, China shipped 2.46 million smart glasses, up 87.1% year-on-year. According to International Data Corporation (IDC), Chinese brands accounted for 23% of global shipments. Industry leaders see something more than just numbers in this growth: the founder of Rokid predicts that smart glasses will become the defining AI device for ordinary users. "Smart glasses or AI glasses will become the most popular AI terminal devices for the end user in the AI era. So I think their popularity will grow, and perhaps in the next three to five years, everyone will be wearing AI glasses," said Zhu Mingming, founder and CEO of Rokid, a Hangzhou-based tech company specialising in augmented reality (AR) and AI devices. The development of multimodal AI is giving smart glasses new momentum. They have become tools for translation, navigation, note-taking, photography, entertainment and even real-time assistance. And in scenarios requiring richer visual experiences, augmented reality glasses or AI-powered AR glasses are becoming portals for work, entertainment, communication and spatial computing. "This product is our current high-end Xreal One Pro series, and below it is the Xreal One S. Both products are based on our proprietary optical module technology and also include the spatial computing chip we mentioned," said Yang Shichi, marketing director at Xreal.
China's smart glasses industry has built a solid hardware foundation, and lighter designs and AI integration have now become standard. According to a tech influencer, the diversity of smart glasses is shaping the industry's future. "There are types like XR glasses, AR glasses, AI glasses, MR glasses – mixed reality glasses. These are completely different types, and I will use them in different scenarios. I think AI has definitely pushed many brands into action – it is the future," said Wang Hongcheng, a tech influencer.
China is one of the world's largest optical and electronics manufacturers, providing a strong foundation for smart glasses development. Leading companies such as Rokid and Xreal are actively investing in R&D, striving to make devices lighter, more affordable and more functional. Multimodal AI models that can process text, images and audio enable smart glasses to perform increasingly complex tasks, from real-time translation to object recognition. Analysts forecast that the global smart glasses market will continue to grow at double-digit rates, with China consolidating its leadership through its supply chain and innovation capacity. The emergence of spatial chips and the development of augmented reality are opening up new applications – from education to telemedicine.
As CCTV+ reports, Chinese smart glasses have become yet another proof that the country is not only catching up but also setting trends in high-tech industries, and the mass adoption of AI wearables promises to change the daily lives of millions of people in the coming years.
