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Every November, our research arm ARtillery Intelligence publishes a report that examines the lessons of the past year and projects the outlook for the coming year. The latter includes concrete predictions about expected market events and quantitative milestones.
That process is now underway, with the final report expected in the next few weeks. And as part of that exercise, we keep ourselves honest by looking back at the previous year’s predictions and how those aligned with the subsequent realities. Were our 2025 predictions on target?
In the spirit of that editorial exercise, we’ll preview the results here, including the five predictions we made at this time last year… and what ended up happening. Rather than a back-patting exercise, this is all about extracting XR-market lessons and calibrating our 2026 predictions.
Those lessons are valuable, even when we were wrong. And we were wrong. The short version is that we got some things right and missed others. The learnings are valuable in both cases. With that backdrop, let’s dive into our five 2025 predictions and what ended up happening.
Prediction 1: AR & AI Collide
Summary: AR and AI are on a collision course. This was projected to reach a point of impact in 2025, including creator-facing and user-facing AI integrations. The former is all about what we call ‘generative AR’ to streamline and automate creation workflows. The latter is all about augmenting your world with intelligence about your surroundings – either visually or audibly.
See more color in the full prediction.
What happened in 2025: AR and AI converged in 2025 in several ways, but the bulk of the opportunity and integration is still ahead. Examples of “generative AR” developments in 2025 include Snap’s Lens Studio AI, announced last week. User-facing integrations include Snap’s Imagine Lens. Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses also put Meta AI at eye level as a central function to the visual augmentation that the device offers. Of course, Ray-Ban Meta Smarglasses are also quite AI-centric, including Multimodal AI. But we can’t take credit for that, as the device was already active this time last year.
Prediction 2: XR Form Factors Diverge & Diversify
Summary: While several pundits continue to foresee a convergence of AR and VR into one uber device, we see the opposite. XR devices are trending towards divergence and diversification. Another way to say that is that they’re becoming more purpose-built. This trend was projected to accelerate in 2025, including a range of devices designed for specific use cases – from non-display AI glasses to screen-mirroring display glasses to more advanced and dimensional AR glasses.
See more color in the full prediction.
What happened in 2025: Device divergence certainly moved forward. We saw more depth in existing device categories, while new form factors were established. For the former, Meta added optionality to non-display smart glasses by launching more purpose-built models like Oakley HSTN and Vanguard for active lifestyles and sporting use cases. We also saw VITURE add more depth to its display-glasses with four new models launched in 2025. As for new categories, Meta Ray Ban Display Glasses represent the rise of a flat AR device class that we’ll also see cultivated in the Android XR universe. The latter was demonstrated by the prototype paraded out at Google I/O in May. Meanwhile, Qualcomm sits at the center of all the above and very much aligned itself in 2025 with this divergence of XR form factors.
Prediction 3: Meta Orion Inspires Seethrough AR
Summary: At the time of our predictions last year, we and the rest of the XR sector were amped up on the then-recent unveiling of Meta Orion. Prior to that, the XR world seemed to sour on optical see-through (OST) devices due to the fall of Microsoft HoloLens and other flameouts. There was also an inflection of video passthrough (VPT) AR, such as the mixed reality offered in Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro. Meta’s technological accomplishment with Orion was thought to reverse that trend and inspire pivots to optical see-through (OST) AR. As part of this outlook, we predicted that Apple would shift its roadmap in response to Orion by deprioritizing Vision Pro and putting more resources towards developing an OST pair of glasses. The fruits of Apple’s efforts would hit the market well after 2025, but the strategic and developmental pivot was projected to occur within 2025.
See more color in the full prediction.
What happened in 2025: Though it can’t be known for sure, as with all things Apple, reliable sources (Mark Gurman) report that Apple has indeed shifted its road map. It will reportedly prioritize optical see-through AR glasses – similar to Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses – over Vision Pro development and updates. It may do both, but the former is the new thrust. Meanwhile, if anyone else was inspired by Orion, it was Google with Android XR. The platform will accommodate both OST and VPT formats, but its emphasis in public displays – and on-stage at Google I/O – has been the former.
Prediction 4: Mixed Reality Development Amps Up
Summary: One big trend in 2024, as suggested above, was the XR market’s blitz towards mixed reality. That could be seen in Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro. The market was excited about video passthrough and mixed reality formats. Therefore, we believed that 2025 would follow that momentum with ample development around mixed reality experiences. After all, software development usually follows hardware penetration as an installed base is established, thereby attracting reach-driven content creators.
See more color in the full prediction.
What happened in 2025: This was probably the biggest miss of our 2025 predictions. Though there certainly was a fair amount of mixed reality development for Vision Pro and Quest 3 in 2025, relatively low device sales dampened developer motivation to invest in these platforms. So the inflection in mixed reality experience development that we projected was overstated. We’ll see if that still ends up happening in the longer term. But due to the dynamics in the previous prediction (a shift towards OST), that may be somewhat muted.
Prediction 5: Visual Search’s Mainstream Move
Summary: For years, visual search has been our dark-horse pick for AR’s killer app. Pointing your phone (or glasses) at objects to contextualize and identify them has utility, practicality, and frequency – all marks of killer apps. And its high-intent use case makes it highly monetizable, so folks like Google are salivating over its potential. Despite all those factors, visual search has been slow to get off the ground because the form factor isn’t right. In other words, visual search’s vessel has primarily been the smartphone… and that involves too much activation energy and arm fatigue. So the technology’s true home is face-worn. We predicted based on some momentum for Ray-Ban Meta’s multimodal AI that visual search would accelerate in 2025. And while that’s underway, mobile developments would also push things forward, such as Apple’s Visual Intelligence. To throw in a concrete assertion, we predicted that Google Lens would reach or exceed 15 billion monthly visual searches in 2025.
See more color in the full prediction.
What happened in 2025: To start with that last part, we were right about Google Lens’ growth, but we actually undershot the mark. Google Lens now sees 20 billion monthly visual searches. Meanwhile, multimodal AI in Ray-Ban Meta Smarglasses has emerged as one of the device’s top use cases. That, plus its sales momentum, tells us that visual search is starting to get its day in the sun. It’s making decent strides – though it still has a long way to go – to becoming a mainstream technology.
Stay Tuned…
So there you have it. Stay tuned for the full report in a few weeks, which will break down the biggest XR lessons from 2025 and predictions for 2026.
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