A business partnership between Meta and eyewear company EssilorLuxottica on Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses has helped the latter’s market capitalisation climb to more 100 billion euros (A$165 billion).
“These new technologies will one day replace smartphones, like streaming services replaced music CDs and electric vehicles will substitute combustion engines,” EssilorLuxottica chief executive Francesco Milleri told the Financial Times.
EssilorLuxottica – a 50 billion euro (A$82.5 billion] merger in 2018 between between Italian eyewear group Luxottica and French lens manufacturer Essilor – owns brands including Ray-Ban, Oakley, Persol, Oliver Peoples, Vogue Eyewear, Arnette, Alain Mikli and Costa.
It also has licensing arrangements with the likes of Jimmy Choo, Tiffany & Co., Versace, Giorgio Armani, Brunello Cucinelli, Burberry, Chanel, Dolce&Gabbana and Prada.
On an earnings call last month, EssilorLuxottica said “glasses integrated with tiny cameras and Meta’s AI assistant were one of the strongest drivers of quarterly sales”, per the Times.
“The merger between Luxottica and Essilor was the evolution of our initial vision which had optics at its core,” chief executive Francesco Milleri told the paper.
“Then technology positively disrupted our plans. The next step with our Meta partners is to become leaders in the wearable computing space . . . [creating] glasses we think will one day replace most other technology devices.”
In mid-September EssilorLuxottica and Meta announced they had extended their partnership for another 10 years. The companies have been collaborating for five years, the result being two generations of Ray-Ban branded smart glasses.
A media statement said the glasses had become a “mainstream product” and were in “high demand” in countries including Australia, the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany and Ireland.
“We have the opportunity to turn glasses into the next major technology platform, and make it fashionable in the process,” said Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The latest generation of Ray-Ban Meta glasses, introduced by EssilorLuxottica and Meta last year, allow users to make phone calls, capture and share photos and videos, listen to music, and livestream content. Meta AI has been introduced in the US and Canada, the company said.
Last week EssilorLuxottica’s chief strategy officer Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio was placed under investigation by prosecutors in Milan as part of what the Times described as a “sprawling probe into the alleged trafficking of illegally acquired private information, alongside dozens of others”. The company is not said to be involved.
In April the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) slapped Luxottica – behind OPSM and Sunglasses Hut – with a $1,512,500 penalty for sending more than 200,000 marketing messages in breach of Australian spam laws.
An ACMA investigation found that between November 2022 and May 2023, Luxottica sent customers 91,231 marketing emails without a functional unsubscribe facility. During the same period Luxottica also sent 112,348 texts and emails to customers who had unsubscribed from such messages.
ACMA said it was “particularly egregious to keep spamming customers after they had gone to the effort to unsubscribe”.
