The Chinese tech company Meizu launched its latest smart glasses during a press moment in Hong Kong on April 29: the Starv Air2 AR glasses. Remarkable is the built-in offline payment function-according to Meizu a world first for AR glasses.
The smart glasses are positioned as a possible successor to the smartphone as a means of payment. The glasses enables users to make purchases with a simple speech assignment. An affirmative command is sufficient to complete a payment, without the intervention of a smartphone or pin device.
This function has been developed in collaboration with Ant International’s Alipay+. The glasses run on Meizu’s own Flyme AI system and collaborates with large Chinese AI platforms such as Alibaba Cloud’s Tongyi Qianwen, Bytedance’s Doubao and Baidus Ernie Bot. The glasses use multiple technologies at the same time, including optical waveguide displays, speech recognition with noise reduction and camera-based code recognition. Meizu has a market share of more than 41 percent in the Chinese AR glasses market.
Physical fashion meets High-Tech
Not only tech companies, but also fashion brands, actively invest in the integration of digital technology. Since 2021, for example, Ray-Ban has been working with Meta, Facebook’s parent company, on smart glasses with camera and AI functions. Most recently, Coperni presented a limited edition of their own smart Ray-Ban Meta glasses during Paris Fashion Week. These glasses can take photos and videos via an integrated camera and communicate via Bluetooth with a linked smartphone.
Another example of a fashion company that combines physical fashion with technology is Chanel. In 2024 the brand announced the premiere sound watch. The watch has integrated headphones, a microphone and remote control.
