Omdia: Global near-vision display market revenue is expected to reach US$675 million in 2026, up 12% year over year

The Zhitong Finance App learned that after experiencing a sharp decline in 2025, the global nearsighted market is expected to resume growth in 2026. Omdia predicts that in 2026, the global near-vision display market revenue is expected to reach US$675 million, an increase of 12% over the previous year. Shipments will reach 14.53 million units, an increase of 16% over the previous year. This increase is mainly driven by increased demand in the AR glasses market. Although demand in the VR market is still sluggish, the continued growth in demand for AR glasses will partially offset the impact of the continued weakness in the VR market.

Figure 1: Near Eye Display Market

AR glasses have become an important driver of market recovery

With the launch of new products by manufacturers such as RayNeo, Alibaba (09988), XREAL, and VITURE, AR glasses are expected to become the fastest growing application area in the near-eye display market in 2026.

Omdia predicts that in 2026 AR shipments will reach 4.1 million units, up 154% year on year; market revenue is expected to reach 156 million US dollars, up 152 percent year on year. This growth reflects the accelerated development of the AR glasses industry, benefiting from continued growth in industry investment and continuous improvement of the ecosystem.

VR headsets still face hardware and ecosystem challenges

After experiencing a continuous decline in 2025 and 2026, the VR display market is expected to continue to be under pressure. Even if there is a subsequent recovery, it will be a gradual process rather than a rapid rebound.

Compared to the rapidly growing AI smart glasses and AR glasses market, VR headsets still face development challenges, including lack of major new product iterations, morphological restrictions caused by large devices and high power consumption, unsuitable for long-term wear, and the appeal of the content ecosystem to the mass market is still relatively limited.

At the same time, industry investment and market focus is gradually shifting to AI smart glasses and lightweight AR devices. As the Quest 3 and Quest 3S enter a mature stage in the product life cycle, Meta has slowed the pace of introducing next-generation VR headsets; the Apple Vision Pro market performance is lower than previous market expectations; and the current market adoption of the Samsung Galaxy XR is still in the early stages. As a result, leading manufacturers are becoming cautious about the pace of investment and growth expectations in the VR market.

Affected by this, Omdia expects global VR display shipments to drop 4% year on year to 10.5 million units in 2026; market revenue will drop 4% year on year to $518.7 million.

Figure 2: The AR display market is developing at an accelerated pace, while the VR display market growth rate is slowing down