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The future for wearables and cameras looks a bit brighter with eyeglass maker EssilorLuxottica taking a 5% stake in Japan optics giant Nikon, a company near and dear to many of our readers.
For those who aren’t aware of EssilorLuxottica, they make up the vast majority of the luxury eyeglass brands out there in the market. They also happen to be Meta’s partner for their Rayban camera-equipped glasses. That last factoid might be a huge part of the reasoning behind the company’s investment in Nikon.
The investment, totaling 5% of Nikon, came out to be $USD 187 million, Reuters reports.
Beginning all the way back in 2000, Nikon and Essilor have remained close as companies and this investment just further deepens that strategic partnership started with their Nikon Essilor firm.
Longtime readers of this blog will recall the several efforts to make tech glasses happen and, even though nothing has set the world on fire yet, this joining of forces makes it clear that this is still a goal that many companies feel is salient for the future of their firms. It also speaks to the trend of putting a camera on everything out there. Indeed, we often talk about how traditional consumer camera sales are in decline (except for the upper end of the market) but we don’t often think about how there are more cameras now, everywhere, than ever before.
It’s hard to think about now but it’s interesting to consider that something mounted to a pair of glasses in the future might be able to capture video and images on the same level as a smartphone today.
Any thoughts that you might have on the future of eyeglasses and cameras are welcome in the comments.
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