IDC: Smart Glasses Hit 85% of XR Shipments as Headsets Shrink to 15.4%

Global shipments of XR headsets and glasses rose 35.3% year on year in the second quarter of 2026, and glasses of one kind or another made up nearly 85% of that total, according to IDC’s quarterly wearables and AR/VR headset trackers. Global smart eyewear shipments reached 3.547 million units in the second quarter of 2026, up 35.3% year over year, according to IDC’s latest quarterly tracking report. Headsets, the kind you strap fully over your face rather than wear as frames, kept shrinking as a share of the market even as unit volumes elsewhere climbed.

Audio and camera glasses accounted for 2.494 million units, while AR / ER glasses reached 505,000 units. VR / MR headset shipments fell 23.3% to 548,000 units. That drop pushed headsets down to roughly 15.4% of total XR shipments, against the 27.1% share they held a year earlier, according to Mixed News’s reading of the same IDC data. Headsets held the remaining 15.4%, against the 27.1% they were left with a year earlier, so the part of the market you strap to your face shrank while the market around it grew.

IDC said display-less audio glasses remained the largest global category, accounting for 70.3% of second-quarter shipments. That’s the Ray-Ban Meta template: no display, a camera, a microphone, and a price low enough for casual buyers who never touch a game controller. The 35.3% headline growth rate is itself a slowdown. Mixed News, citing IDC director of consumer devices research Jitesh Ubrani’s own summary of the quarter, reported that the figure marks a cooling from the 130.2% growth IDC tracked the previous quarter, attributed to tougher year-on-year comparisons and a gap between product launches rather than fading demand.

China Posts Its First Decline in Smart Eyewear

The pattern inverts inside China, the market that has driven much of the category’s growth over the past two years. China’s smart eyewear shipments fell 8% year over year to 611,000 units, marking the market’s first decline. Audio and camera glasses dropped 35.4% to 332,000 units, while China’s AR / VR market grew 85.8% to 279,000 units.

Within that Chinese AR/VR segment, AR / ER glasses grew 123%, driven partly by lightweight AI glasses. Domestic brands are doing most of that work: an IDC breakdown circulated by futunn credited monochrome display glasses from vendors including Rokid and Inmo with overtaking full-colour models in China for the first time, at 51.2% of that segment. For the first time, monochrome glasses surpassed full‑color glasses in market share, capturing 51.2%—led by brands such as Qianwen, Rokid, and Inmo.

Read also: Meta Connect 2026: Phoenix Headset, Camera-Free Luna Glasses Expected Sept 23

Six Months In: 7.1 Million Units, Up 70.5%

Zoomed out to the first half of the year, the trend holds. Figures reported by futunn from the same IDC tracking data put cumulative global smart glasses shipments at 7.114 million units for the first six months of 2026, up 70.5% on the same period a year earlier. That’s growth built almost entirely on frames rather than headsets, a split IDC expects to keep widening through the rest of the decade.

IDC’s Forecast: 40.5% Growth Penciled In for 2027

IDC isn’t calling this a passing spike. IDC forecasts 26.3% growth in unit shipments for 2026, then 40.5% in 2027 and 26.4% in 2028, on the assumption that display-free frames keep leading while display glasses and headsets ramp alongside them. None of these numbers are a headcount of people actually wearing anything day to day. Neither set of figures is a headcount of people wearing anything. Shipments are units into the channel rather than sales.

Where that leaves the strapped-on headset is the part worth watching into next year. Sony, Meta and the smaller VR-first studios that build for full headsets are effectively fighting for a slice of a market that just fell to 15.4%, down from more than a quarter twelve months ago. IDC’s own projection has that segment rebounding through new device launches later in 2026, but the Q2 numbers show the gap widening before any of those products ship.

Reported from

• TechNode
• IDC
• Mixed News