Are Rokid Smart Glasses transitioning from a "Blue Ocean" to a "Red Ocean"?

As the industry shifts from blue ocean to red ocean, technical and ecological shortcomings have become insurmountable gaps for Rokid. The industry reshuffle is also transitioning from opportunity-based competition in the blue ocean to strength-based competition in the red ocean.

AI large model technology reconstruction and mature supply chains quickly eliminate optical barriers in the smart glasses industry, ushering in a new phase of industry competition among leading players.

IDC data shows that from 2024 to 2029, China’s smart glasses market will have a five-year compound growth rate of 55.6%, the highest in the world. In this once blue ocean market, new and old forces are beginning to fight head-to-head, and the industry landscape continues to evolve. Rokid, as a vertical player, has seized the window of opportunity by focusing entirely on smart glasses, capturing a position in the domestic top tier and securing 3.9% of the global market share and 28.5% domestically.

However, the company lacks a complete ecological layout and proprietary core technologies. Its advantages are highly dependent on the development stage of the industry’s “blue ocean.” As the smart glasses industry rapidly shifts from “blue ocean” to “red ocean,” signals of giants like Huawei and Xiaomi entering heavily are becoming more evident. Coupled with accelerated industry standardization, Rokid faces increased survival challenges.

Rokid’s current situation and future difficulties reflect the real survival scenario of Chinese vertical players in the smart glasses industry during industry transition.

01 Global Landscape: Meta’s Monopoly Builds Barriers, China Becomes Growth Core

The global AI glasses market is dominated by Meta, which holds an 85.2% market share and is projected to sell 7.4 million units worldwide by 2025, forming an absolute monopoly. Its core advantage lies in creating a four-dimensional closed loop of “Ray-Ban brand + Luxottica channels + Meta social ecosystem + product simplification,” establishing a competitive edge that is hard to replicate. These AI glasses, indistinguishable from ordinary sunglasses, address user social concerns with a friendly $349 price point, combined with first-person shooting, AI voice interaction, and other high-frequency needs, precisely matching mass demands. Luxottica’s over 6,500 stores worldwide provide integrated experience, eyewear, and purchasing services, creating a channel advantage difficult for most competitors to reach. Meta’s social ecosystem forms a value loop for hardware, enabling content to be instantly shared on social platforms, with large models and cloud collaboration optimizing AI interactions. This “hardware + ecosystem” model allows Meta to maintain a dominant voice globally, even without a formal presence in China, setting a benchmark for all players.

As an internet company, Meta relies on its core technological leadership, Ray-Ban’s brand, and Luxottica’s channels, making it the leader in global AI glasses.

The core of global market growth is rapidly shifting toward China, with a 55.6% five-year CAGR, offering vast opportunities for domestic players. Industry insider Li Qiao (pseudonym) states that there are about five to six thousand companies involved in the entire domestic smart glasses supply chain, with four to five hundred engaged in product business. The top players mainly fall into three categories: telecom giants like Huawei and Xiaomi, automakers like Li Auto, and vertical players like Rokid and Thunder Bird. The key opportunity for vertical players is that “big companies, despite their brand, R&D, and funding advantages, have not yet made smart glasses their sole or primary strategic focus.” This window is critical for Rokid and others to seize market share and enter the top tier, creating a different “multi-camp competition” pattern in China compared to the global dominance of Meta.

02 Vertical Positioning: Full Focus as Core Advantage, Entering the Top Market Tier

As a representative of China’s vertical smart glasses industry, Rokid was among the earliest to seize industry dividends. Its core competitiveness does not lie in technology or ecology but in making smart glasses its sole strategic focus, dedicating full attention and deep cultivation. This choice allowed it to break out quickly during giants’ strategic gaps, achieving impressive market results. Founder Zhu Mingming publicly disclosed that a product initially planned for 40,000 units monthly sold out in five days, topped the category’s total online sales during Double 11, with over 15 million interactions, and saw a 30% month-over-month sales increase in January 2025. External estimates suggest its shipments will surpass one million units in the next two years, with a target of 10 million annual sales by 2028.

From product and market deployment, Rokid’s actions align with current industry needs, forming a stage-specific competitive advantage. Its ROKID Glasses AI, priced around 3,000 yuan, features full-vision display technology, integrated with 89 languages translation, prompting, navigation, and other practical functions, meeting mass consumer demands. Technologically, it adopts a lightweight 38.5g design, dual-chip architecture, with battery life and recording capabilities far exceeding industry averages, and integrates mainstream local large models tailored to Chinese user habits. Market-wise, it first achieved full coverage across 34 provincial administrative regions, establishing a nationwide foothold. User structure has expanded from tech circles to the general public, from C-end to B-end, with increasing penetration into government, agriculture, education, and other non-tech sectors. This success stems from early deep engagement in industrial and security B2B scenarios, creating differentiated advantages in application.

Thanks to this full focus, Rokid has established a solid industry position. Li Qiao (pseudonym) comments, “Rokid has very strong competitiveness in the industry,” ranking second domestically after Xiaomi and entering the second tier globally. This achievement is largely due to the opportunity presented during the industry’s blue ocean phase and its strategic choice to focus solely on one track, rather than possessing an inherently uncopyable core advantage.

03 Innate Weaknesses: No Ecosystem, No Core Technology, Fragile Foundation

While entering the top tier, Rokid’s inherent weaknesses are evident: it lacks a self-built ecosystem and proprietary core technologies. Its products and technologies heavily depend on external supply chains and partners, making its competitive advantage during the blue ocean phase unstable and insufficient to withstand the upcoming red ocean competition.

Technologically, Rokid claims full-stack self-research but lacks unique advantages in key components and underlying tech: its Qualcomm AR1 chip is a common choice among industry players; its self-developed YodaOS-XR system only provides basic low-latency, low-power interaction without forming a proprietary ecosystem; its previously proud monochrome display solution is now a consideration for consumers and not an irreplaceable advantage. Telecom veteran Yang Ming (pseudonym) points out, “The core barriers for high-end smart glasses are large models and SOC chips. Large models determine AI interaction, multimodal understanding, and privacy security— the soul of high-end experience; SOC chips determine computing power, power consumption, latency, and hardware integration— the heart of high-end performance.” Rokid lacks self-developed SOC chips and has not built a large model independently, only collaborating with multiple large model providers, making it difficult to achieve long-term differentiation in AI interaction.

Ecologically, Rokid is at a severe disadvantage. Meta’s social ecosystem forms a closed loop; Huawei and Xiaomi have full-scene ecosystems based on smartphones and IoT. Rokid’s focus on a single product category—smart glasses—without other product matrices limits ecosystem synergy. Its devices only support basic functions, unable to connect with other smart devices or enhance user stickiness and switching costs through ecosystem integration. This “single-category without ecosystem” situation results in lower user retention and repurchase rates compared to giants with ecosystems, leaving its products at the hardware tool level and unable to evolve into a true “smart entry point.” In short, Rokid’s success during the blue ocean phase was due to window opportunities and vertical focus. When the industry shifts to the red ocean, its technological and ecological shortcomings will be magnified.

04 Survival Challenges: Giants Enter, Industry Matures, Blue Ocean Advantages Rapidly Erode

Rokid’s vertical focus heavily depends on the “blue ocean” industry context where giants have yet to heavily compete. As the smart glasses industry becomes a core tech frontier, giants like Huawei and Xiaomi are increasing their investments. Coupled with accelerated industry standardization and cross-industry entrants, Rokid’s blue ocean advantage will quickly diminish, and survival space in the red ocean will be squeezed.

In terms of competition, Huawei and Xiaomi possess comprehensive advantages Rokid cannot match. Once they prioritize smart glasses as a core strategy, their market share will be significantly threatened. They have strong brand recognition, extensive offline channels nationwide, and better supply chain integration, enabling lower-cost mass production. Technologically, they have self-developed chips and systems, with advantages in large models and hardware integration. Their full-scene ecosystems—smartphones plus IoT—allow smart glasses to seamlessly integrate into users’ lives, forming a closed loop of experience. Currently, Xiaomi’s smart glasses, as a supplement to its ecosystem, hold 31.9% of the domestic market, ranking first. If Huawei and Xiaomi make smart glasses a primary strategic focus and increase R&D and marketing, Rokid’s vertical advantage will be overwhelmed by their overall strength.

From industry development, faster supply chain standardization leads to increasing product homogeneity. As the industry matures, core components like chips and optical modules become more interchangeable, and trends favor aesthetics, lightweight design, and practicality. Features like navigation and translation are becoming more similar across products. Industry insider Li Qiang (pseudonym) notes, “Once user cognition matures, demand evolution may outpace enterprise technological iteration.” Rokid has yet to find a breakthrough to amplify its core differentiation. In a landscape of product convergence, its accumulated user recognition during the blue ocean phase can be easily diluted by giants. Additionally, offline channels—key in industry competition—require heavy investments in display, testing, and fitting, which Rokid cannot afford alone. Its scale expansion faces huge capital and operational pressures. Cross-industry entrants like QuMi, leveraging brand and technology, will further fragment the market, squeezing Rokid’s survival space.

05 Red Ocean Imminent: Rokid’s Survival Dilemma

The shift from blue to red ocean in smart glasses is inevitable. For Rokid, the most severe challenge is that it cannot achieve breakthrough core technology nor establish a complete ecological system in the short term. The core of red ocean competition is the contest of technological barriers and ecological capabilities. When hardware price-performance becomes the main battleground, a new wave of industry淘汰 is imminent. Rokid stands at a critical juncture.

Li Qiao (pseudonym) states, “The smart glasses industry is likely to become highly competitive, and the industry’s momentum and profits are concentrated in the high-end segment above 4,000 yuan. Competition in this range hinges on underlying technology and ecological strength,” which are Rokid’s weaknesses. Currently, high-end models’ core barriers are self-developed SOC chips and independent large models—strategic assets comparable to Kirin chips and HarmonyOS in smartphones. Rokid’s current approach of “self-research + openness” lacks the strength to make breakthroughs in core tech and cannot create unique AI interaction experiences like Meta or Huawei through independent large models. Veteran tech enthusiast Zhang Hui (pseudonym) comments, “In the blue ocean phase, whoever captures market demand first wins; in the red ocean, comprehensive strength matters most. Without technological barriers, it’s just endless price wars.” Price wars are a fatal weakness for vertical brands. Compared to Huawei and Xiaomi, Rokid has no advantages in supply chain bargaining or cost control. Once price competition intensifies, profit margins will shrink rapidly, risking survival.

More critically, ecological construction is a long-term effort. Rokid’s single-category focus makes ecological implementation nearly impossible. Ecosystem core lies in product matrix synergy and user scenario integration. Meta’s ecosystem is built around social scenarios; Huawei and Xiaomi’s ecosystems encompass full-scene intelligent life. Rokid’s focus on only smart glasses, without other products, prevents ecosystem formation and user scenario building. Even if it attempts to develop an ecosystem, it lacks the foundation and leverage. Yang Ming (pseudonym) emphasizes, “Investing in independent model R&D is essential to create difficult-to-copy tech and experience barriers.” The investment and difficulty of ecosystem development far exceed those of single technology R&D. For a resource-constrained Rokid, achieving ecosystem landing in the short term is nearly impossible.

When lacking technological breakthroughs and ecological foundations, Rokid faces the risk of being淘汰 in the red ocean. Li Qiao (pseudonym) notes, “The ultimate winners in the red ocean of smart glasses will be either large companies with comprehensive brand, tech, and ecological advantages, or new brands that leverage AI technological breakthroughs to create new experiences.” Giants dominate through their overall strength, while new brands can disrupt with innovative AI tech. Rokid, lacking both, relies on its vertical focus during the blue ocean phase, which becomes meaningless in the red ocean. Without rapid innovation or strategic shift, it is likely to be淘汰 in the industry reshuffle. This is the common fate of all vertical players without core tech or ecological layout.

AI development has created blue ocean opportunities for smart glasses and enabled vertical players like Rokid to achieve initial breakthroughs through focus. However, competition in tech always favors long-term strategic investment. Short-term market opportunities cannot replace the value of core technology and ecological strength. As the industry shifts from blue to red ocean, technological and ecological shortcomings will become insurmountable gaps for Rokid. Industry reshuffle is also a transition from opportunity-based competition to strength-based competition. For Rokid, only by abandoning scale obsession and focusing on niche scenarios to develop single-point technological advantages can it hope to find a survival window amid giants. Otherwise, it will face淘汰 in the industry’s new wave of reshuffling.