Omdia: Global XR headwear shipments fall 39% in 1H26 as XR glasses growth fails to offset headset decline

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 3, 2026--

Global shipments of XR headwear declined 38.7% year-on-year to 1.9 million units in the first half of 2026, according to the latest data from Omdia. While XR glasses are gaining traction, their growth from a small base was insufficient to counter a steep drop in XR headset shipments. By 2025, the market had recorded its fourth consecutive year of decline following the pandemic-induced peak in 2021.

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In 1H26, XR glasses expanded their share of total shipments to 25.8% – up from 10.2% in 1H25. Tethered display glasses drove almost all of this growth, with RayNeo, VITURE, and XREAL collectively capturing 93.1% of the tethered display glasses segment. Strong demand for devices such as the RayNeo Air 4 and VITURE Beast series propelled RayNeo and VITURE into second and third place, respectively, in the overall XR headwear market, with shares of 9.9% and 8.6%.

“XR glasses are gaining momentum because consumers are increasingly willing to trade some immersion for less friction,” said Qiran Ju, Senior Analyst at Omdia. “Lighter designs and familiar use cases such as video viewing and gaming are lowering the barriers to adoption.”

Meta, meanwhile, retained the overall market lead despite its share dropping sharply from 71.3% in 1H25 to 48.2% in 1H26, as demand for the Meta Quest 3 and 3S continued to weaken.

“Meta poured massive resources into headsets, but has struggled to replicate the breakout success of the Quest 2,” said George Jijiashvili, Senior Principal Analyst at Omdia. “Despite the Quest 3 and 3S offering better specs at accessible prices, they have failed to drive a major upgrade cycle or meaningfully expand the audience. The ongoing slump across the headset market reinforces that bulky headwear remains a tough sell beyond a core enthusiast base.”

From a regional perspective, North America remained the largest XR headwear market with a 43.9% shipment share in 1H26, followed by Western Europe at 23.8%. Greater China recorded the largest increase in global shipment share, going from 11.9% in 2025 to 16.3% in 1H26, surpassing Rest of Asia-Pacific as the third-largest regional market, supported by strong domestic uptake of tethered glasses.

“The next phase of XR evolution will be less about requiring people to enter isolated virtual environments, and more about embedding AI and spatial capabilities naturally into everyday wear,” noted Jijiashvili. “Moving away from occasional, closed-off sessions to frequent, light-touch interactions will be the key to breaking out of the current enthusiast niche.”

ABOUT OMDIA

Omdia, part of TechTarget, Inc. d/b/a Informa TechTarget (Nasdaq: TTGT), is a technology research and advisory group. Our deep knowledge of tech markets grounded in real conversations with industry leaders and hundreds of thousands of data points, make our market intelligence our clients’ strategic advantage. From R&D to ROI, we identify the greatest opportunities and move the industry forward.

Global XR headwear vendor ranking and market share, 1H26

Global XR headwear shipments by form factor, 1H23 to 1H26

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are opening higher while oil prices continue to climb amid ongoing tension in the Middle East. Fighting between the U.S. and Iran has increased this week after the U.S. hit Iranian rocket launchers on an island in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday. The S&P 500 rose 0.5% in early trading Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 368 points, or 0.7%, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.6%. Nvidia rose 1% after the giant chip company said it would buy the artificial intelligence platform Hugging Face for $13 billion. Treasury yields moved lower in the bond market.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

U.S. futures are mostly lower and oil prices continued to climb with the violence in the Middle East ongoing.

Iran fired at Kuwait on Thursday in retaliation for U.S. bombardments earlier in the week. Fighting between the U.S. and Iran intensified after the U.S. hit Iranian rocket launchers Sunday on an island in the Strait of Hormuz, saying Iran was planning to use them to send mines into the waterway.

S&P 500 futures fell 0.1%, and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were little changed. Nasdaq futures slipped 0.2%.

The renewed fighting has sent U.S. crude prices sharply higher this week, up 11%, a trend that continued Thursday. Brent crude, the international standard, climbed 1.8% to $97.33 per barrel. Benchmark U.S. crude rose 2.1% to $92.92 a barrel.

Rising oil prices have added to existing inflationary pressures and the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury is up 0.94% this week, although it fell to around 4.77% early Thursday. The yield hovered around 4.81% Wednesday, its highest level since 2023. The 2-year Treasury slipped Thursday to 4.36% after reaching 4.41% a day earlier, its highest mark in more than a year and a half.

On Friday, the crucial U.S. employment report for August is released.

In Europe, Germany’s DAX lost 0.1% to 25,819.38, while the CAC 40 in Paris declined 0.3%, to 8,257.47. Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.2% to 10,775.13. Asian markets were mixed.

The Japanese yen strengthened sharply against the U.S. dollar, with the dollar trading at 156.07 yen Thursday, down from 158.71 yen late Wednesday. The dollar had surged to above 160 yen earlier in the week, raising expectations that regulators might intervene to prevent the yen from falling further.

The euro traded at $1.1612, up from $1.1588.

Specialist Anthony Matesic works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Specialists Dilip Patel works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Currency traders work at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)