HTC, Acer, Jorjin push into AI glasses from three directions

Taiwanese hardware maker HTC confirmed on 3 September that its Vive Eagle AI glasses are now rolling out in Germany, the UK, France and the United States, according to a 12 September report by TechNews citing an interview with Global Views Monthly. The glasses first launched in Taiwan in August last year before expanding to Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore, and are now pushing into Western markets ahead of the fourth-quarter shopping season. The expansion was independently confirmed by Engadget, which reported that Vive Eagle went on sale in the US on launch day at $499, with European and UK shipments beginning on 21 September at €469 and £429 respectively. HTC is not alone: Taiwanese PC maker Acer unveiled two wearables at this year's Computex after an eight-year absence from the category, and AR specialist Jorjin is pursuing a third path with a white-label reference design. Together, the three companies represent three distinct routes into the same emerging market.

HTC: privacy and battery life as a way into Western markets

HTC vice president Huang Chao-ying told Global Views that AI glasses are positioned as an 'all-day AI companion,' a different logic from VR headsets built for immersion; XR products, including the AI glasses line, now account for a larger share of HTC's revenue than smartphones. To make all-day wear realistic, Vive Eagle runs on Qualcomm's Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 chip, skips a display altogether, and keeps weight under 49 grams, with more than 36 hours of standby time and 3 hours of talk time. The system splits processing between the glasses and a paired phone — weather, calendar and music stay local, while only complex queries are sent to the cloud, cutting latency and power draw. Huang said that during visits to the Chinese market, he found return rates above 50% for cheap AI glasses at retail, mostly due to unstable Bluetooth connections across the huge range of phone models in use; HTC's engineering team has tested compatibility model by model in response. On privacy, HTC says it does not use footage to train its own AI models or for advertising, and the hardware carries a physical, tamper-resistant recording indicator — a contrast the company draws directly with Meta. Distribution runs through both eyewear retailers and telecom carriers, and a major next-generation redesign is planned for the first half of 2027.

Acer's return to XR: glasses as an extension of its PC ecosystem

Where HTC is selling directly to consumers under its own brand, Acer's approach ties smart glasses into an existing hardware ecosystem. Senior product manager Wang Chih-ming said the company's return to wearables, its first since the 2019 OJO 500 headset, reflects eight years of accumulated display expertise and a belief that AI is changing human-computer interaction. At Computex this year, Acer launched two devices: the $499.99 GR0, an AR headset with dual displays, and the $299.99 GI0, a display-free AI glasses model. The GI0 connects to Google Gemini for real-time meeting transcription, live translation, and AI voice and image recognition, while the GR0 uses Acer's own SpatialLabs 3D Hub to convert 2D video and games into 3D in real time. Wang framed the strategy as building 'a personal computing portal,' linking the glasses to Acer's PCs and handheld gaming devices rather than selling a standalone gadget — and argued that Google and Samsung's own Gemini-native glasses, due this autumn, would help mature the category rather than simply compete with it.

Jorjin's white-label bet: becoming the 'central kitchen' of AR glasses

Taiwanese AR firm Jorjin is taking a third route. In June, it launched a glasses model codenamed S9, with near-eye display and eye-tracking, as one of the flagship products of Qualcomm's 'Snapdragon START' white-label reference design, unveiled at the AWE conference the same month. Qualcomm modularised the chipset, Applied Materials supplied the full-colour waveguide optics, and Jorjin, acting as the 'scaling partner,' handled integration — the optical engine, waveguide, chipset and frame — keeping total weight under 50 grams. Jorjin chairman Liang Wen-lung told Global Views that 'AI has computing power, but no perception,' arguing that glasses are the interface closest to human eyes, and that eye-tracking — enabled by a camera 'slightly bigger than a sesame seed' embedded in the nose pads — lets AI infer where a user is looking without constant voice commands. Evolving from an earlier model built with Foxconn through to the S9, Jorjin is positioning itself as a reference-design supplier that could let ordinary opticians fit customers with smart glasses; a custom development project that once cost upwards of $1 million can now be built from Jorjin's sample hardware and SDK for about $6,000, opening the category to resource-constrained AI startups. Jorjin, capitalised at NT$450 million, has already passed certification with one or two clients and begun small-batch shipments, and is racing to complete its own new product introduction (NPI) line by the end of the year, targeting monthly output in the thousands of units.

• HTC Vive Eagle: under 49g, Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1, 36+ hours standby, launched in Germany, UK, France and the US from 3 September
• Acer GR0 (AR glasses, $499.99) / GI0 (AI glasses, $299.99): unveiled at Computex 2026, GI0 integrates Google Gemini
• Jorjin S9: near-eye display plus eye-tracking, part of Qualcomm's white-label Snapdragon START design, under 50g
• Jorjin's development cost: custom builds dropped from over $1 million to about $6,000 (sample hardware plus SDK)
• Jorjin capitalised at NT$450 million; new production line due by year-end, targeting thousands of units per month

What it means for Taiwan's supply chain

The three strategies differ, but they point to the same underlying shift: the hardware barrier to entry for AI glasses is falling fast. For Taiwan's many small and mid-size optical component, module and contract manufacturers, Jorjin's 'central kitchen' approach to white-label design opens a route that previously did not exist — breaking into wearables supply chains usually meant locking into one international brand's custom specifications. Through Qualcomm's modular Snapdragon START architecture, traditional eyewear contract manufacturers and component suppliers now have a lower-cost way in, and can even sell directly to AI startups that lack their own hardware manufacturing capability. The risk cuts both ways: Liang acknowledged that Jorjin's next hurdle is yield and production stability, and if the new NPI line does not reach its target capacity by year-end as planned, the smaller suppliers counting on this route into the market may find their own entry delayed as well.