Apple is surveying its own employees about smart-glasses idea

Apple is asking its employees how they feel about smart glasses as the tech giant considers entering the fledgling market, according to the latest report from the prominent Apple tipster Mark Gurman.

Citing people with knowledge of the matter, Gurman said on Monday that Apple has started gathering feedback from employees in focus groups organized by the company’s Product Systems Quality team, which is part of Apple’s hardware engineering division.

In a leaked email to select employees based at the company’s headquarters in California, the team wrote: “Testing and developing products that all can come to love is very important to what we do at Apple. This is why we are looking for participants to join us in an upcoming user study with current market smart glasses.”

Gurman said it’s not unusual for Apple to use internal focus groups when considering whether to enter a new market, as it can gain valuable feedback while keeping its plans secret, though as in this case, there’s always a chance that such activities may leak.

This is just the latest in a string of reports suggesting that Apple is moving closer toward the idea of building a pair of smart glasses designed to take on Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, which have a built-in camera for taking photos and videos, and also let wearers make calls, listen to audio content, and ask an AI assistant questions. A recent update added the ability to send voice messages, and have the device read out incoming ones. At a special event in September, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that his team is developing a pair of smart specs with immersive augmented-reality capabilities for future release.

Considering how Apple is struggling to make a success of its larger and clunkier — and pricey at $3,499 — Vision Pro mixed-reality headset, the company is sure to exercise a great deal of caution when moving ahead with any plan for smart glasses, especially as the market for the device continues to be pretty niche.

And as Gurman said in his report, if the feedback from employees is positive enough to prompt Apple to pursue the project, its smart glasses are still likely to be “years away” from launch.