The invisible war to control the next platform

On 5 October 2026, Norway announced it wanted to temporarily ban smart glasses in parks, beaches, schools, gyms and hospitals. In France, 67% of those surveyed already see a risk to privacy. These still-marginal objects are already causing concern.

This is no coincidence. Behind the frames lies an older and more structuring battle: the fight to own the platform that will follow the smartphone. Meta, Apple, Google and Snap are investing billions. None of them is European. And none of them lets its users decide.

This article presents the facts, the risks and the mechanics of this war.

1. Why smart glasses are already causing concern

On 5 October 2026, the Norwegian government announced that it would propose to Parliament a temporary ban on the use of AI glasses in a number of public places¹. Named locations include parks, beaches, museums, shopping centres and public events, but also schools, nurseries, playgrounds, youth clubs, medical practices, pools and gyms with changing rooms¹.

The Minister of Digitalisation, Torgeir Micaelsen, summarised: he does not want "a society where people worry about being photographed, filmed or recorded in places where they are not used to it"². The text, still to be drafted, would be temporary: time for a group of experts to propose permanent regulation¹. Private use would remain authorised¹. The minority Labour government still needs to secure the support of other parties¹.

This is not an isolated case.

In France, the CNIL had already published a call for vigilance on 11 May 2026³. According to its survey conducted from 22 to 29 January 2026 among 2,128 people, 67% of French people consider smart glasses a risk to privacy³. Mistrust, unease, worry: the fears concern image rights without consent, AI-driven misuse and the fate of captured data³. The CNIL recalls a difference of nature: unlike the phone "which must be taken out and pointed", the glasses "film everything their wearer looks at"³. It has launched work at European level via the European Data Protection Board³.

In the Netherlands, the optician chain Hans Anders suspended the sale of Ray-Ban Meta in over 400 stores at the beginning of October 2026, pending the outcome of the public debate⁴.

2. The war for the next platform

For fifteen years, a conviction has run through the industry: after the PC, after the smartphone, there will be a next platform. Whoever owns it — its system, its app store, its account and its data — will set the rules and levy a share of every usage.

This conviction has a theory, formulated by one of the sector's most influential investors, Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Facebook's first outside investor. In an essay published on 12 September 2014 in the Wall Street Journal, excerpted from Zero to One, he wrote: "Americans mythologize competition [...] Actually, capitalism and competition are opposites"⁵. For Thiel, competition is a trap; the only desirable position is monopoly, controlling a market to the point where no one can offer a substitute⁵.

This is why the word "war" is not a metaphor. It is a fight to occupy the monopoly position of the next layer, the one through which all others will have to pass. And this war already has losers.

3. The losers of the smartphone

The first loser is Microsoft. Present as early as 2003 with Windows Mobile, around 13% of the market at its peak, then Windows Phone 7 in 2010, the company invested more than 18 billion dollars in the venture⁶. In July 2017, it threw in the towel: Windows Phone accounted for just 0.3% of the market, versus 81% for Android and 18% for iOS⁶. The master of the PC failed to transpose its dominance onto the next device.

The second loser is less well known, and more instructive. Linux was there before everyone else. In November 2006, before the iPhone and before Android, the company FIC announced OpenMoko, a fully free phone based on Linux⁷. The Neo 1973 and then FreeRunner models were manufactured in a few thousand units in 2007 and 2008⁷. Development stopped in April 2009, for lack of resources in the face of the iPhone and Android⁷. Ten years later, one of its architects, Harald Welte, drew a bitter conclusion: the smartphone world had become "much more restricted, locked down and proprietary" than in the OpenMoko days, and "you can hardly escape being locked in with a vendor"⁸.

The result: a duopoly. Android and iOS equip more than 99% of the planet's smartphones⁹. There is no European equivalent, whether for the mobile OS, the store, the hyperscaler or the global card network⁹. And this position is taxable: whoever owns the store levies a commission; whoever owns the system sets the rules. Everyone else is merely a guest.

4. Tenants who want to become owners

Among these guests, two are not satisfied: Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) and Snap (Snapchat). Their applications live on Android and iOS. They depend on Apple's and Google's stores, their rules, their commissions and their privacy policies.

In other words: Meta and Snap are tenants. They pay rent, respect the landlord's rules, and their fate depends on rivals. In Thiel's logic, this is the worst position: that of the competitor who suffers.

Hence their objective, now out in the open: no longer be tenants, but owners. Create their platform. Control its system, its store, its account and its data. For Meta, it started with the VR headset. For Snap, it is glasses. This is the race that the rest of this article traces.

5. Meta: ten years of headsets to free itself

For Meta, everything began in 2014 with the acquisition of Oculus, a young VR headset manufacturer¹⁰. The logic is that of Thiel: since the smartphone is locked by others, a new device is an opportunity to become an owner in turn.

The steps followed: Rift headset in 2016, Quest range from 2019, then in 2021 Facebook renamed itself Meta and announced the "metaverse"¹⁰. If the discourse at the time was messianic, the accounting reality is more brutal.

Since 2020, the Reality Labs division, which carries these bets, has accumulated losses: 6.62 billion dollars in 2020, 10.19 in 2021, 13.71 in 2022, 16.12 in 2023, 17.72 in 2024, 19.19 in 2025¹¹. That is approximately 83.6 billion dollars in six years¹². With 4.03 billion in losses in Q1 2026 and 4.62 billion in Q2, the cumulative total reaches nearly 88 billion by mid-2026¹³. These figures appear in official documents filed by Meta with the US regulator.

In 2026, the shift is confirmed. Around 70% of Reality Labs spending now goes to glasses and wearables, only 30% to VR and Horizon¹². Mark Zuckerberg himself put it this way: the company is "directing most of its investment towards glasses and wearables", 2026 losses would be "similar to last year", and 2026 would likely be "the peak"¹¹. CFO Susan Li mentions a "significant" reduction in VR investment¹². The Horizon Worlds platform went into "maintenance mode" at the start of 2026, several VR game studios were closed¹³.

In our view, the headset's failure is thus relative: millions of Quests were sold and a community exists, but the headset did not become the mainstream platform that would replace the phone. It remained a niche, and a niche does not build an empire. That is why Meta is now looking towards glasses.

6. Apple: the champion running behind

Apple nonetheless won the smartphone. It controls the system, the store and the chips. But on the next platform, it was caught off guard.

Its answer is called Vision Pro, starting at 3,499 dollars: technically remarkable, but expensive and bulky, designed for developers and early adopters more than for the general public¹⁴.

For what comes next, all the information below comes from press leaks (Bloomberg and Mark Gurman, Ming-Chi Kuo) not confirmed by Apple, and should be read as such.

According to these convergent leaks, the lighter successor project "Vision Air", code N100, would have been cancelled, and a new headset, code N224, would not arrive before late 2028, or even 2029¹⁵¹⁶. Instead, Apple would be preparing glasses, code N50, pushed back to late 2027: no augmented-reality screen in the lenses in the first generation, dependent on the iPhone, positioned between 200 and 500 dollars, more like an accessory than a standalone device¹⁷¹⁸.

The symbolism is strong: the company that won the smartphone arrives late to the next race.

7. Google: a series of failures

Google, owner of the dominant mobile system, should have been best placed. Its history, however, is marked by failures.

The most famous remains Google Glass. Announced in 2012, sold at 1,500 dollars to developers, the device promised a screen in glasses. Deemed intrusive and socially unacceptable, to the point that the nickname "glassholes" stuck, it stopped being sold to the general public in January 2015¹⁹.

Second attempt: Daydream, a mobile VR ecosystem launched in 2016, abandoned in October 2019, having failed to convince developers and users²⁰.

In 2026, Google is playing a third card: Android XR, a glasses and headset ecosystem developed with Samsung and Qualcomm, with opticians Gentle Monster and Warby Parker, and the Gemini assistant²¹. The strategy replays the 2008 playbook: rallying manufacturers around its system to capture volume. But Android XR glasses are not standalone: they depend on the phone²¹. In our view, Google, master of the smartphone, is thus trying to turn the next device into an extension of its turf: this is as much a concession as an ambition.

8. Snap: the gamble on glasses

Among all the players, Snap has the oldest and most consistent bet. For good reason: Snapchat, like Facebook, is a tenant of the duopoly.

The story begins in December 2014 with the acquisition of Vergence Labs, a small camera-glasses company²². As early as 2016, Snap marketed its Spectacles at 130 dollars, sold in vending machines: a curiosity success, around 150,000 pairs, and 40 million dollars of unsold stock²³. Generations followed, up to augmented-reality models for developers.

On 16 June 2026, Snap announced the Specs: fully autonomous augmented-reality glasses, with no wires or external box, with a 51-degree field of view, 16 million colours, 132 to 136 grams, around 4 hours of battery life²⁴. Price: 2,195 dollars, 2,295 euros in France, distributed in autumn 2026 via Orange²⁵. The press reception was harsh, Numerama calling it a "mega flop", for lack of an obvious application²³.

The financial bet is immense. Snap has been loss-making since its stock market listing in 2017²⁶. On 15 April 2026, the company announced it would cut around 1,000 jobs, 16% of its full-time workforce, to reduce its annualised cost base by more than 500 million dollars²⁷. A few weeks earlier, the activist fund Irenic Capital, which holds around 2.5% of the capital, estimated that augmented reality had absorbed more than 3.5 billion dollars and demanded the closure or spin-off of the business²⁸. Evan Spiegel refuses: for him, glasses will be as important as smartphones by 2030²⁶.

Snap is not a charity, and its glasses depend on its account and ecosystem. But its obstinacy reflects a conviction: the next device, the one worth burning billions on, is glasses.

9. The great shift: from headsets to glasses

There is a fundamental movement: the headset was a first bet; it did not conquer the general public. Glasses are the second, and everyone is converging on them.

It is at Meta that the shift is most visible. Since 2019, the group has partnered with EssilorLuxottica, the Franco-Italian eyewear giant, owner of Ray-Ban and Oakley: the optician brings frames, brands and distribution; Meta brings technology, software and artificial intelligence²⁹. The Ray-Ban Meta look like classic glasses, with camera, speakers, microphone and Meta AI assistant, but without an image superimposed on reality. A success as an everyday object: more than 7 million units sold in 2025, versus 2 million in 2023 and 2024 combined²⁹. The range is scaling up: Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 at 349 euros, camera-less Ray-Ban Meta Audio at the same price, and Ray-Ban Display at 899 euros in France from 13 October 2026, with a colour screen in the right lens and an electromyography Neural Band included³⁰.

But these Ray-Ban Display are not yet augmented-reality glasses: lacking a SIM card, they depend permanently on the phone via Bluetooth, with 6 hours of battery life, and several features are absent at the French launch, notably cycling and transport navigation, holographic video calls, the agenda and real-time subtitles limited to English³¹.

The north star has a name: Orion. Unveiled in September 2024, Orion is not a product but a never-commercialised prototype, whose production cost was estimated at around 10,000 dollars per unit³². Approximately 70 degrees of field of view, the widest in a glasses format, with silicon carbide lenses, microLED projectors, an electromyography band, seven cameras, less than 100 grams³²³³. Orion serves as the target for the coming years' consumer range.

In our view, mixed-reality glasses are moreover not yet refined enough to be sold to the general public. Battery life, field of view, weight, price and use cases: nothing is settled. Yet this is the bet Meta and Snap are making to control the next post-smartphone platform, after the relative failure of headsets. It is not yet won, but this is where the next chapter is being played out.

10. Lock-in, in three layers

Although the business models differ between advertising for Meta, premium hardware for Apple, federating platform for Google, creation for Snap and gaming for Valve, the architecture reproduces the same pattern everywhere.

First layer: silicon. Almost all devices rely on the same Qualcomm chips: Snapdragon Reality Elite for Meta, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Valve's Steam Frame and two Snapdragons for Snap's Specs²⁴³⁴. Only Apple designs its own processors. Outside Apple, the "next platform" depends on a single American supplier.

Second layer: software. The systems are proprietary: Horizon OS at Meta, visionOS at Apple, Android XR at Google, in-house OS at Snap. There is only one real exception: SteamOS, built on Linux and Arch, open, modifiable, with a real developer mode³⁴³⁵. Valve demonstrates that an open device is technically possible: 1,049 euros in France, Proton for Windows games, FEX for x86, Lepton for Android applications³⁴³⁵.

Third layer: control. This is the most decisive. In each ecosystem, a mandatory account is required to activate the device. This account opens onto an exclusive store, the only one authorised to distribute applications. And it is backed by captured data: gaze, environment, habits. The hardware belongs to you; the usage does not.

Our reading is that Meta wanted to be an owner rather than a tenant, but that it is becoming the owner of the same kind of cage as Apple or Google. Even Valve, the most technically open, remains backed by a single account and store, the Steam Store. The platform war is changing its face, it is not changing its structure.

11. Data remains at the heart of the model

This shift does not change the economic model of platforms; it extends it. Data remains the fuel, whether images, sounds, location, usage habits or gaze. It serves personalisation, ad targeting, assistant training and keeping users within the ecosystem.

What glasses and headsets change are the conditions of capture. The camera and microphones are worn on the face, permanently, and also capture the surroundings, often without the filmed persons being aware. A phone films when its owner decides to film. Glasses can film what their wearer looks at, while they look.

Eye tracking is an illustration. It can uniquely identify a person and, as such, a 2024 legal study classifies it as biometric data under Article 9 of the GDPR, the most protected category³⁶. Meta states that abstracted gaze data can be processed on its servers and that third-party applications can access it in some cases, even though raw images of the eyes are processed on the device³⁷. Apple, by contrast, claims local processing on the Vision Pro, with no sharing to applications or to Apple³⁸. The technical difference is real, but it does not change the bottom line: the platform captures more, more often, and in situations where consent is harder to obtain.

12. No one wants your good

The most important question remains: in this battle, is anyone playing for us?

None of these players is European. Chips, systems, stores and XR market data come from American companies. This is true even for SteamOS, although built on free software, but carried by an American company. Europe only produces "bricks": opticians, components, software. No system integrator capable of assembling hardware, system, store and ecosystem. It is the same story as for cloud, cards and mobile OSs⁹. The hardest part: the European regulation meant to bridle the gatekeepers, the DMA, today covers no XR store or system. The six gatekeepers designated in September 2023 are designated for mobile stores, OSs, messengers and other existing services, not for XR³⁹.

None of these players is genuinely in the hands of users. Even open, a platform remains a position of power: you do not own its rules, you do not choose its arbitration, you cannot leave with your data. Valve comes closest, but the Steam account remains a single gateway.

None of these players wants your good. This is not an insult, it is an economic evidence: a platform wants to maximise its position by capturing attention, data and money, and retaining you. Your freedoms enter the equation only if a regulator or a balance of power constrains it.

We demonstrated this in our investigation into the case of judge Nicolas Guillou: sanctioned by the United States for applying the law, this French magistrate found himself deprived of accounts, payments, emails and bookings, not by a judge, but by corporate over-compliance with US sanctions. The account has become the passport, and the passport does not belong to you.

Transpose this to the next platform: your Meta, Apple or Google account will be the key to the memories captured by your glasses, your assistant, your games. The day that account goes down, the device you bought loses its function. You will own the hardware; never the usage.

13. Taking back control

Should we give up? No. But reducing the problem to "don't buy glasses" would be a mistake.

Demand openness. The DMA has shown that a regulator can force gatekeepers to open stores and systems, with 500 million euros in fines for Apple and 200 million for Meta in April 2025³⁹. The coming battle is to bring XR platforms into its scope, otherwise lock-in will continue unhindered.

Prefer open systems, when they exist. The Steam Frame proves it is technically possible³⁴³⁵. This is not a geek detail: it is a freedom choice. And before every purchase, a simple question should decide: if I want to leave tomorrow, can I recover my photos, my videos, my data? A service you cannot leave is not a service, it is a trap.

Build sovereign alternatives. Where Europe let smartphones and cloud go, it can still choose, for XR, to condition its market on guarantees: hosting, applicable law, open formats, account independence. This requires players, and customers who demand them.

This is the position we take at Archibou. We do not claim to solve the platform problem. But we apply, at our own scale, the same logic: data hosted in France, free software, a service that does not read your files, does not resell them, does not use them to train models, and that you can leave. A partial response, but a consistent and verifiable one.

Conclusion

The race for the next platform is not a distant horizon: it is already underway, in the products delivered in 2026 and the 2027 calendars. Four players are leading it — Meta, Apple, Google and Snap — with Valve as a counterpoint player. None is leading it for us, none is European, and none lets its users decide.

Nothing is settled, however. A platform only durably locks in if those who use it accept it. The question posed at the beginning remains open, and it does not call for a technical answer, but a choice:

Who will control the future of our digital interactions?

As long as the question remains open, the answer does too.

Sources

Article written by Archibou. October 2026.

Factual assertions are sourced in the notes above. Information about Apple products not yet marketed comes from press leaks and is not confirmed by the manufacturer.

This article can be freely shared and reproduced under a CC-BY-4.0 licence, with attribution.