Ahead of Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2026, where another pile of smart glasses will be unveiled, our research arm Rethink TV warns that a looming cultural backlash needs to be tackled, in order to achieve volume shipments. For MNOs, the hope of potential AI inferencing revenues is enticing, but the scale of the commercial opportunity here is a headscratcher – something that would be much appreciated, but which is not big enough to justify an immediate rip and replace program. The forecast examines three form factors that are housed under the Extended Reality (XR) Devices umbrella – VR Headsets, ‘Lean-back’ Glasses, and ‘Mobile’ Glasses. The lattermost encompasses devices like Meta’s Ray-Bans, which enjoyed an encouraging CES, while the other two…