Over 50% growth in five years, Rokid's "Final Battle" has arrived

Author|Xiaofeng

Source|Bowang Finance

Recently, Rokid founder & CEO Misa revealed in an interview with the media that the sales of smart glasses in January this year increased by 30% month-on-month, and new products are expected to be released by the end of the year.

At the same time, Rokid previously announced a shipment target of tens of millions. However, despite the appearance of a thriving track and the company’s ambitious goals, the market landscape has quietly begun to change.

The big picture is that although IDC data shows that China’s smart glasses market will have a compound annual growth rate of 55.6% from 2024 to 2029, ranking first globally in growth rate. But in the once blue ocean market, the maturity of the main supply chain has reduced functional differences, manufacturers are fiercely competing in the market, and the technological restructuring triggered by AI large models is rapidly filling the barriers that once existed in the optical lens track.

As a result, new and old forces are starting to compete closely, and the track landscape continues to evolve.

Rokid, as a vertical field player, has seized the window period when tech giants have not yet made smart glasses a core strategy, and has entered the relatively leading camp in the domestic market, moving towards larger-scale shipments.

But as the smart glasses track quickly shifts from “blue ocean” to “red ocean,” signals of heavy entry by giants are becoming more obvious, and the challenges Rokid faces in ecology and technology are intensifying simultaneously.

As for Rokid’s future, will it be the first to secure a leading position with tens of millions in shipments, or become the target of “encirclement”? The market will decide.

01

Rokid is a dark horse in China

Currently, the global AI glasses market is dominated by Meta, which holds 85.2% of the 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,” building an unbeatable competitive edge.

Moreover, Meta’s social ecosystem creates a value loop for hardware, with content captured and instantly synchronized to social platforms, and AI interactions optimized through cloud-end collaboration with Llama large models. This “hardware + ecosystem” model allows Meta to firmly control the global industry discourse, even without a formal entry into China, making it a benchmark for all players.

In this context, the domestic market remains the main base for local players, and with global market growth rapidly shifting towards China, the 55.6% five-year CAGR offers broad development space for domestic companies.

The domestic smart glasses industry chain includes about five to six thousand companies, with around four to five hundred engaged in product business. The leading 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 core opportunity for vertical players is that “big companies, despite their brand, R&D, and capital advantages, have not yet made smart glasses their sole or primary strategic focus.” This window period is a key opportunity for vertical players to seize market share and climb into the top ranks, creating a different “multi-camp competition” pattern from the global dominance of a single player.

Against this backdrop, Rokid has leveraged its early focus advantage to start enjoying industry dividends.

Founder Zhu Mingming publicly disclosed that products initially planned to sell 40k units per month sold out in 5 days, topped the entire category’s online sales during Double 11, with over 15 million interactions, and projected a 30% month-on-month growth in sales by January 2026. Some outside estimates suggest its shipments in the next two years could surpass one million units, and the company previously set a target of 40k units in annual sales by 2028.

From product and market deployment, Rokid’s moves align with current industry needs, forming a phased competitive advantage. For example, its ROKID Glasses AI glasses priced around 3,000 yuan feature full-vision display technology, integrated with 89 languages translation, captioning, navigation, and other practical functions, catering to mass consumer demand.

In terms of market layout, it has achieved full coverage in over 30 provincial-level administrative regions, securing a foundational position nationwide. This full focus has helped Rokid establish a foothold in the industry. The external view is that “Rokid still possesses strong competitiveness within the industry.”

02

Are technology and ecology under pressure?

While entering the top tier of the market, Rokid still has room for improvement. It lacks the natural ecological layout of large manufacturers and faces challenges in breaking industry homogeneity and advancing high-end development from the perspective of core technological barriers.

Regarding homogeneity and internal competition, Rokid has full-stack self-research, but to achieve differentiated advantages in core components and underlying technology, there is still progress to be made.

“Features like navigation, health monitoring, photography, AI recognition, translation are quite similar now, so detailed differentiation is necessary. It’s like cosmetic surgery—if everything looks the same and has no distinctive features, it’s pointless. My prediction is that whoever first amplifies the hardware of smart glasses and makes the core differences more obvious will succeed. For Rokid, this is an advantage, as it is one of the companies investing most intensively in unit density.”

But it’s also a challenge. The goal is: when talking about phones, everyone can quickly mention Huawei, Apple, and Xiaomi’s fundamental differences in form, system, screens, chips, etc. Currently, smart glasses manufacturers are still far from this ‘common knowledge’ level of differentiation. What points can be amplified to create clear differences? That’s still under exploration,” said Mr. Zhu (pseudonym), who has worked in the smart hardware field.

High-end development is also not easy.

Rokid has launched its domestic trend series into the 4K+ price segment, indicating a layout in the high-end track. However, looking back, Rokid, while insisting on self-research, also incorporates external components and collaborates with multiple large model providers.

Many of its products use Qualcomm’s AR1 series chips, which are industry-standard choices, with no fundamental difference from other players. It has not developed an independent large model but cooperates with several large model providers, and its AI interaction and core experience differences are not yet very obvious.

Additionally, its once-prized monochrome display solution has become a consideration for some consumers, and is not an irreplaceable technological advantage.

Due to nondisclosure of responsible information, the full details of Rokid’s strategies and investments in some core underlying technologies remain unknown. However, it’s clear that although Rokid is a leading vertical player, influencing high-end potential involves many factors, and there are still many tough nuts to crack in high-end development.

On the ecological side, Rokid remains open to cooperation, but compared to top competitors, there are differences.

The most obvious example is Meta’s social ecosystem loop, Huawei and Xiaomi’s full-scene IoT ecosystem, while Rokid has established cooperation ecosystems (like maps), but these are built on others’ platforms. So, this company lacks a fully self-developed ecosystem gene, and its current business mainly focuses on a single category—smart glasses—lacking other categories to increase stickiness.

“During the blue ocean phase of smart glasses, it’s about who captures market demand first; in the red ocean, it’s about overall strength. If future giants establish technological barriers, the entire track could fall into a war of attrition.”

In short, Rokid’s success is a result of the blue ocean window, vertical focus, and its unique value. But as industry dividends fade, challenges in other areas will not be small.

03

Smart glasses still need a blockbuster

As the AI glasses track shifts from blue ocean to red ocean, with increasing homogeneity and fierce competition, a truly market-breaking blockbuster product becomes the key to breaking industry deadlock and helping players achieve scale breakthroughs. For players including Rokid, this is crucial for establishing a leading position and reaching the 4k shipment target.

The core of a blockbuster is not just simple feature stacking but precisely meeting user needs with differentiated experiences. This is what current smart glasses lack.

Most products today still replicate basic functions like translation, captioning, and navigation, with similar user experiences, making it hard to create memorable points. A true blockbuster needs to find a perfect balance between technological innovation and scene application, transforming smart glasses from “novelty” to “necessity.”

For Rokid, creating a blockbuster has natural advantages: first, its deep vertical focus makes it more attuned to consumer needs, from product layouts in the 3,000+ yuan mainstream price range to nationwide market positioning, building a solid user base and market awareness; second, its full-stack self-research technological accumulation offers possibilities for breaking homogeneity—whether in display technology iteration or AI interaction optimization, there is room for continuous refinement.

But creating a blockbuster also tests the comprehensive capabilities of industry players: they must overcome core underlying technologies, achieve differentiation in chips, display solutions, and large model interactions, and break free from industry-standard tech. They also need to implement technological innovations into specific scenarios, making product experience a unique competitive advantage. Additionally, they should leverage brand advantages, combining high-end domestic trends with mass consumer needs, so that the product features both technological highlights and market universality.

In the current environment of heavy investment by giants, the window for vertical players to create blockbusters and consolidate advantages is shrinking.

All industry peers in this track must break homogeneity through technological breakthroughs and meet user needs with ultimate experience to continue racing in the track and truly secure a top position with 10 million shipments.

The smart glasses track awaits the arrival of the iPhone 4 moment.