Samsung filed a trademark for ‘Samsung Glasses’ in the UK.
The trademark appears on the Intellectual Property Office section of the official UK government website. It was filed by Samsung Electronics on August 21, and officially approved and registered on November 10.
When filing a UK trademark companies must specify the product categories they wish it to cover, from an approved prewritten list, and Samsung selected:
Virtual reality headsets; Augmented reality headsets; Headphones; Smartphones; Smart glasses.
That’s a rather broad range that makes it difficult to say exactly what Samsung Glasses may be, but two possibilities are most likely based on Samsung’s past announcements and the current state of the industry.
The XR Headset With Google?
In February Samsung officially announced it was working on an XR headset, with Google handling the system software via a new variant of Android and Qualcomm providing the chipset.
Harry Baker
In September a South Korean news outlet Maeil Business Newspaper suggested Samsung’s headset could be priced roughly around $2000 and would compete with Apple Vision Pro.
Last month Qualcomm confirmed it plans to reveal a new XR chipset early next year more powerful than the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 in Quest 3, likely the chip that will be used in Samsung’s device.
David Heaney
And earlier this month, South Korean newspaper The JoongAng reported Samsung is planning to announce the headset at an event in the second half of 2024, then launch it in December with a limited initial quantity of just 30,000 units. UploadVR independently confirmed that Samsung told developers it plans to launch in late 2024.
“Glasses” would however be strange branding for a product that would ostensibly look like more like a headset or goggles. So what else might Samsung Glasses be?
Smart Glasses?
In January 2020 at CES, Samsung casually showed off a demo of AR glasses, without specifying whether it was an upcoming product or even acknowledging anything remarkable about showing such a device.
Samsung could perhaps be preparing to commercialize AR glasses, separately to the XR headset.
David Heaney
This seems very unlikely though, as the core technology behind AR glasses is still in its infancy, far from ready for appealing consumer devices. Apple and Google reportedly indefinitely shelved their AR glasses projects earlier this year, and Meta reportedly doesn’t plan to launch a consumer product until at least 2027.
What seems far more likely is non-AR smart glasses. Meta recently launched new smart glasses with Ray Ban that can capture photos and videos, livestream to Instagram, take calls, and play music. And multiple Chinese startups such as XREAL (formerly Nreal) have launched smart media glasses with displays that let you cast your devices to a virtual screen fixed in front of your head.
Samsung may have its own take on this product category, perhaps with integration with its Galaxy phones and watches. It’s strange to see the trademark be for Samsung Glasses rather than Galaxy Glasses in this case though, which may suggest diverging branding from Samsung’s existing consumer offerings.
