For Mark Zuckerberg, the smartphone is obsolete. The future is connected glasses. The head of Meta believes in it and he is not the only one. This is also the case for the CEO of EssilorLuxottica, and that’s a good thing since he has been a partner of the American company for Ray-Ban Meta since 2019.
“Glasses, long considered prosthetics and then fashion accessories, are about to become the central object of daily life, perhaps replacing smartphones,” Francesco Milleri said in a Bloomberg Italian podcast.
“We can imagine in the near future hundreds of millions of interconnected smart glasses and the people who use them creating huge communities,” he added.
Glasses and artificial intelligence
Francesco Milleri believes in smart glasses so much that he plans to increase the production capacity of Ray-Ban Meta. According to the director of EssilorLuxottica, it is expected that by the end of next year 10 million units per year will be reached. A statement that is in line with Mark Zuckerberg’s wishes. While more than one million Ray-Ban Metas were sold in 2024, the billionaire hopes to increase this figure to five million this year.
But EssilorLuxottica could also use this production capacity for Nuance Audio glasses, which allow you to see better and, above all, hear better. The company also has other projects such as the development of medical technologies used in doctor-patient relationships, in addition to other more innovative and expensive products. However, connected glasses will remain at the center of the future of Franco-Italian society, which also pins its hopes on artificial intelligence.
“Beyond the social and medical field, we will see applications of our wearable computing devices in the world of home automation, entertainment, autonomous driving or even the control of air, light and sound quality,” explained Francesco Milleri.
Words that once again prove Mark Zuckerberg right. “Our goal is to create stylish glasses that provide personal superintelligence and a sense of presence through realistic holograms,” the billionaire said at the Connect 2025 conference, where he presented Meta Ray-Ban Display, the company’s first screen glasses.
The CEO of Meta is convinced that connected glasses will be the main means of integrating superintelligence into our daily lives in the future. At the moment, this concept of AI being smarter than humans is far from a reality. Meanwhile, Meta is investing billions to make glasses a preferred way to use its AI tools, starting with its assistant, Meta AI. The American giant notably invested $3.5 billion in EssilorLuxottica at the beginning of 2025.
Source: BFM TV
