(Yicai) June 29 -- Rokid, the top smart glasses maker by shipments, has launched YodaOS, which it says is the world's first artificial intelligence-native operating system for smart glasses, betting the sector is nearing its "iPhone moment."

"Today's Rokid -- and the industry as a whole -- feels very much like the BlackBerry era before the first iPhone," founder and Chief Executive Misa Zhu told Yicai in an interview.

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Hangzhou, Rokid believes that the next phase of competition in smart glasses will be driven by software and ecosystems rather than hardware.

While the company led smart glasses sales on Douyin, Tmall, and JD.Com during this year's 618 shopping festival, Zhu said user retention and daily engagement matter more than shipment volumes because early market leadership alone is not enough to guarantee long-term success. "BlackBerry was the absolute leader in business phones. So what? It died anyway," he told Yicai after Rokid's recent Open Day event on June 26.

The AI-driven OS was the centerpiece of the Open Day event. Designed specifically for smart glasses, YodaOS aims to reduce users' reliance on smartphones by enabling voice-activated and other on-device interactions.

User research conducted around the 618 shopping festival showed that most first-time buyers were purchasing smart glasses for practical applications rather than simply trying new hardware. Common use cases included helping children with homework and tracking World Cup match schedules. "Users are no longer buying the product for the product itself -- they're buying it for a specific ability," Zhu said. "We've already entered that era."

Rokid continues to offer prize money through developer competitions, but Zhu acknowledged that the platform needs to exceed an installed base of two million consumer devices before it can sustainably support independent developers. At that stage, the company plans to introduce a token-based revenue-sharing mechanism under which the AI inference costs generated by user interactions will be billed in tokens and shared proportionally with developers.

Building an Open Ecosystem

According to Counterpoint Research, global AR glasses shipments more than doubled year on year in the first quarter, with Rokid ranking first worldwide in waveguide AR glasses, a type of see-through smart glasses that project digital images into the user's field of view.

Chinese market research firm Runto Technology reported that China's AR glasses retail sales almost doubled from a year earlier in May, with Rokid leading the market in both unit sales and revenue.

Japan has emerged as a notable market in Rokid's global expansion. In May, Rokid raised around USD4 million on Japanese crowdfunding platform Makuake, setting a platform-wide fundraising record across all product categories.

Zhu attributed the strong performance to Rokid's open ecosystem strategy. The company's devices allow users to switch freely among ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, and Alibaba Cloud's Qwen instead of being tied to a single AI model.

"Many Japanese users have no interest in a device that only runs Meta AI," Zhu said. "They want to use whatever is best."

He extended that view to the broader AI industry, arguing that China's AI ecosystem is becoming increasingly open while the US market is moving toward greater platform lock-in. "It calls itself OpenAI, but it's actually becoming less and less open," Zhu said.

Gary Cai, Rokid's head of ecosystem, said the company has integrated its platform with WeChat, Douyin, Alipay, JD.Com, Alibaba Cloud, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services, covering payments, livestreaming, and cloud services. An overseas AI agent store is scheduled to launch on July 10.

"Openness is the basic logic of any platform," Cai said. "Without openness, you simply cannot build a rich ecosystem."

Editor: Emmi Laine