Samsung Set to Enter AR Glasses Market in Race With Meta, Apple

(Bloomberg) -- Samsung Electronics Co. expects to enter the augmented reality glasses market in partnership with Alphabet Inc.’s Google, according to the company’s top mobile executive, jumping into a product category that is suddenly heating up.

Fresh off announcing a collaboration on their Project Moohan headset in December, the two companies are already working on AR glasses together, Samsung’s TM Roh said in an interview. Roh, the president of Samsung’s Mobile Experience division, didn’t provide further details about the glasses, but said they’d eventually launch as part of the company’s efforts to co-develop the Android XR operating system.

As for when they would arrive in the market, Roh said the companies “will try to reach the quality and readiness we want as soon as possible.”

Creating true AR glasses — long the stuff of science fiction — has been an elusive goal of the technology industry. Google, Apple Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. have all sought to build a lightweight pair of spectacles that can overlay data and graphics on real-world views, but challenges related to cost and engineering have made progress slow.

Suwon-based Samsung, South Korea’s largest company and one of the world’s most prolific smartphone makers, is looking for new engines of growth for its consumer business. The company expanded its range of wearable and health-related electronics last year with the Galaxy Ring, which tracks users’ sleep, stress and exertion through the day. Android XR, which was announced as a project under development by Samsung and Google as “one team,” aims to deliver a unified OS for all classes of wearable headsets.

Augmented reality glasses from the duo would compete with upcoming products from Meta — and potentially Apple, which has been more guarded about its plans. Meta aims to launch AR glasses dubbed Artemis in 2027, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday.

The Project Moohan headset, meanwhile, is a mixed-reality device — one that melds AR and virtual reality. It uses outward-facing cameras to mimic an AR effect, but it’s mostly a VR device that fully encompasses the user. Roh said Samsung is still trying to determine the release date and price for that product — expected this year — but the level won’t be based exclusively on manufacturing costs.