All Eyewear Intelligence articles in Volume 27 No. 8
View all stories from this issue.
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ArticleXpanceo and JBD tackle the smart contact lens’s toughest circuit
Xpanceo and Jade Bird Display (JBD, Shanghai) are co-developing a micro-display specific to the smart contact lens. According to their joint press release (July 7), they have reached a second phase of their partnership. JBD has been dealing in microLED microdisplays since its founding, in 2015, and became in 2020 ...
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ArticleMeta tightens camera privacy controls while reportedly exploring always-on recording
Meta seems to be pulling in two directions at once with its smart glasses. The company itself announced on July 7 that it will be making it harder to disable the warning LED on today’s cameras, with their on-demand recording. On the morrow the Financial Times (FT) reported that Meta ...
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News briefs
China’s Shenzhen opens first AI eyewear mall
Shenzhen’s Longgang district has opened China’s first AI-glasses-themed commercial complex, marking a bid to reposition the region’s decades-old eyewear manufacturing base as a consumer and branding hub. The Henggang AI+ Glasses Center held its opening ceremony on July 8 in Longgang’s Henggang subdistrict, alongside the launch of Vision Hub, a ...
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News briefs
Titan Company sales up 23 percent in Q1
Titan Company’s EyeCare division sales grew 23 percent year on year in Q1FY27, accelerating from the previous quarter (+16 percent). The business added 7 net new stores during the quarter, bringing its total network to 847 stores as of June 2026. The group said that broad-based momentum across both owned ...
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News briefs
IZIPIZI opens first store in Japan
Paris-based eyewear brand IZIPIZI has opened its first directly operated store in Japan, located in Tokyo’s Harajuku district. The store was opened in partnership with IDEAPORT, IZIPIZI’s longtime distributor in the country.Shoppers can browse the brand’s core lines — SUN, READING, KIDS, ACTIVE and SCREEN — alongside exclusive models created ...
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News briefs
Menicon opens automated distribution hub in Germany
Menicon announced last week that its subsidiary Menicon SC GmbH officially opened a new automated dispatch facility on May 19, 2026, at its site in Offenbach am Main, near Frankfurt, after four years of development. The ceremony marks the site’s transformation from a traditional logistics center into a technology-driven distribution ...
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ArticleJINS reports double-digit revenue growth, lower margins in 9M results
JINS HOLDINGS posted nine-month results showing sales growth holding at double digits, even as profit growth all but stalled, with a sharp domestic margin decline largely counterbalanced by a marked overseas profitability improvement. Net sales for the nine months through May 31 rose 15.6 percent year on year to ¥80.7 ...
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News briefs
EU eases battery rules for smart glasses, other wearables
The European Commission adopted a delegated act on July 14 exempting smart glasses and other wearable devices from EU rules requiring user-removable batteries. Under the Batteries Regulation, portable batteries must generally be removable and replaceable by consumers — but the new rules add six product categories to the existing exemption ...
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News briefs
Optical sector tops France’s health insurance fraud rankings
France’s optical sector accounted for 53 percent of all fraud detected by supplementary health insurers (“mutuelles”) in 2025 — roughly €59 million — far ahead of dental care (15 percent) and hearing aids (8 percent), according to the annual report from Alfa, the country’s insurance anti-fraud agency. Total detected fraud ...
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ArticleFielmann’s H1 results reflect a widening gap between home and abroad market dynamics
Fielmann Group’s preliminary first-half 2026 results captured increasingly split dynamics between the company’s domestic and international markets. Group sales rose 2 percent year-on-year to €1.25bn, helped by a sharp acceleration in international sales growth (+6 percent versus +1 percent in Q1), even as the German optical retailer’s home market continued ...
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ArticleSENZ and the bid to bundle AR’s visual stack
On June 17 Applied Materials announced an OEM system for smart glasses, comprising waveguide optics, a light engine, sensing, vision correction and electronic dimming. Called SENZ, the system is pitched as cutting time-to-market and manufacturing complexity for brands seeking to build AI-powered display glasses. Applied says it is addressing a ...
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ArticleDelfin considering asset spinoff, shareholding pact for controlling Essilux stake
Delfin, the Del Vecchio family holding company that controls EssilorLuxottica with a 32.4 percent stake, is considering a spinoff of its assets among other possible solutions to an impasse between the heirs of Luxottica founder Leonardo Del Vecchio, according to a report in Il Sole 24 Ore. According to the ...
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News briefs
J&J contact lens sales rise 6.1% in Q2
Johnson & Johnson generated contact lens sales of $1,025 million in the second quarter of 2026, up by a reported 6.1 percent and 6.0 percent higher at constant currency rates. Sales growth continued to be driven by the strong performance of the Acuvue-Oasys 1-Day family of products, including recent launches ...
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News briefs
Inspecs Group appoints new CFO
Inspecs Group has appointed Robert Brodie as Chief Financial Officer, succeeding Chris Kay, who will stay on as a consultant during the handover. Brodie, expected to join the stock listed eyewear group in autumn 2026, joins from City Energy Network, where he served as CFO, having previously held finance leadership ...
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News briefsEssilorLuxottica reportedly picks up French struggling XR headset maker
Reports from Road to VR and Germany’s Heise Online indicate that EssilorLuxottica may have acquired Lynx, the Paris-based mixed-reality headset startup, though the deal has not been officially confirmed. Founded in 2019, Lynx built standalone mixed-reality headsets combining VR immersion with color passthrough, pitching itself as a European alternative to ...
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News briefs
Smart sport eyewear brand ENGO raises €5.1 m
French smart eyewear maker ENGO has raised €5.1 million to accelerate its international expansion and development of next-generation heads-up display technology. The round was led by an all-French investor group: Ventech, Odyssée Venture and Bpifrance Amorçage Industriel, the public investment arm of the French state. ENGO makes lightweight AR glasses ...
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News briefs
Charmant downsizes European operations with German site closure
Japanese eyewear maker Charmant has informed its clients that it will discontinue the operations of CHARMANT GmbH Europe, its German subsidiary, along with its Benelux representation, effective September 30, 2026. New orders will be accepted only until August 14. The move, however, does not signal a total retreat from Europe. ...
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ArticleItaly eyewear exports fall 6.1% in Q1 as US market continues to shrink
The value of Italian eyewear exports in the first quarter of 2026 fell by 6.1 percent to €1.34 billion, as another sharp decline in sales to the US was only partly offset by gains in Europe and other markets, according to figures from Italian eyewear trade association Anfao. Exports to ...
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ArticleAsia-led ODM growth powers Sun Hing’s H2 rebound
Sun Hing Vision Group’s consolidated turnover rose 7.5 percent year on year to HK$891 million (€97m) for the year ended March 31, 2026, “despite the overall poor operating environment,” the company said. The full-year growth reflects a sharp turnaround: after a muted 2.9 percent rise in H1, revenue in H2 ...
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ArticleGentle Monster plans to quadruple overseas stores as AI glasses launch nears
IICOMBINED, the Seoul-based parent of Gentle Monster, plans to increase its eyewear brand’s overseas store count roughly fourfold within three to five years, taking the network from around 50 stores today to a targeted 200, according to Korean media reports citing fashion industry sources. The group currently operates 86 stores ...
