(Yicai) Dec. 27 -- China’s sales of augmented reality glasses are soaring, and yet sales of US tech giant Apple’s mixed reality headset Vision Pro, which hit the market in February, are underwhelming, mainly due to its high price and lack of a diverse range of features.

Sales of AR headsets in the country are expected to surge 25 percent this year from the year before to 284,000 units, according to CINNO Research. And the sales value should reach CNY700 million (USD96 million).

By contrast, Apple sold around 300,000 of its Vision Pros worldwide this year, of which only 10,000 units were sold in China.

Apple’s Vision Pro is not selling well in China due to its high price at over CNY30,000 (USD4,100) each, the poor user experience and a limited content ecology, said Wang Zixin, an analyst at Runto Technology.

China’s RayNeo is the best-selling producer of AR glasses in China, according to Runto Tech’s data. In the field of smart audio headsets, Xiaomi Home’s products have become the most popular in the last two months. And in the VR domain, ByteDance's PICO all-in-one VR headsets rank first.

Sales of consumer-grade AR glasses in China jumped in November, largely due to promotions rolled out on e-commerce platforms including JD.com and Douyin, as well as national subsidy policies that reduced the cost of AR glasses and spurred sales, Zhou Hua, chief analyst at CINNO Research, told Yicai.

Smart glasses with cameras that enable the creation of short videos and outdoor sports scenarios, will become the next trend, Beijing-based Runto Tech said. Such headsets have been popular overseas for some time, but they are still in their infancy in China.

The integration of cameras into smart glasses presents challenges for manufacturers in terms of balancing the weight, providing adequate battery life and ensuring heat dissipation. It also requires higher chip computing power, end-side AI, and multi-modal interaction capabilities.

With Baidu’s Xiaodu AI glasses and Rokid headsets entering the market next year, sales of camera-enabled smart glasses in China will pick up in 2025.

The deep integration of generative AI is another development direction for smart glasses. This year, less than 20 percent of the smart glasses on the market in China had AI functionalities, which rely on user voice commands and mobile phone support, but this should top 60 percent next year, Runto Tech said.

In the future, smart headsets may become less reliant on external computing power and provide proactive services anytime and anywhere through on-device AI processing units, it added.

Editor: Kim Taylor