Buried in the wake of Snap and Meta’s massive smartglasses announcements in the last two weeks, a third major tech company released some interesting news about its push into the space. And while many people are preoccupied with guessing if or when Apple will make any moves, the other “A” in the FAANG set of companies is quietly pushing ahead to roll out smartglasses to its workforce: Amazon .

In 2025, Amazon started a small pilot in which delivery associates could wear smartglasses to help guide them through the final steps of a dropoff. Activated once the driver has safely parked, the glasses help them locate the right packages in the truck and confirm the package being delivered matches the address, then guide them via GPS to the exact delivery location. Updates announced in September include real-time defect detection to flag a wrong-doorstep drop-off, plus a paw print icon with an audio alert when delivery data suggests a pet may be present. Amazon says it expects to have more than 20,000 devices in the field by the end of 2027.

So far, so… practical. A small pilot with a limited use case, albeit an important one. The glasses Amazon developed don’t look as strange as the original Google Glass, but they’re nowhere near as polished as a pair of Ray-Bans or the forthcoming Warby Parkers. Still, it would be a mistake to write Amazon off as a serious competitor in smartglasses — it holds several advantages, and more history in the space, than one might think.

To be fair, Amazon’s early forays into smartglasses were less than successful. It launched the Echo Frames in 2019, with a second generation in late 2020 and a third in 2023. These were audio-only glasses — no display, no camera — and they never gained market traction. They’re now increasingly hard to find, with a search on amazon.com showing them as “unavailable.” But the foundational work appears to have laid the groundwork for the glasses delivery drivers are wearing today.

Amazon also acquired North, the makers of Focals, in June 2020. The Focals were ahead of their time, which proved to be both a blessing and a curse. Sleek and attractive, they had clean displays, app integrations, and a simple joystick on a ring controller. But they were hard to buy — customers had to be scanned and fitted in one of two physical showrooms — and at $999 a pair, with each unit custom-made, the model couldn’t scale. Then the pandemic crushed what was left of the retail strategy.

All of which leaves Amazon well positioned to take a real piece of the smartglasses market, should it choose to. The design DNA from the Focals acquisition still has value, and the spatial data flowing in from delivery routes could prove enormously useful for mapping and navigation — a massive use case for consumer glasses.

Amazon’s own ecosystem could provide a powerful moat as well. The company blocked Meta’s Muse AI agent from shopping on Amazon.com just last month, and it could just as easily reserve agentic access for its own products. Given how many people shop on Amazon daily, that’s a substantial share of the market to lock in. Imagine glasses that recognize products in a physical store, offer instant Amazon comparison pricing, and let you buy with delivery already handled. Physical retailers would cry foul — and have a tough time stopping it. Amazon would also gain a rich stream of data on shopping and browsing habits, feeding personalized recommendations and dynamic pricing.

Through AWS, Amazon also has deep enterprise relationships and a degree of institutional trust that pure hardware players lack. For industrial use cases, it has demonstrated sophisticated mapping and product recognition — critical capabilities for warehouse and factory floor work. Meta leads in consumer use cases, but the category is still early, and Amazon doesn’t lack the resources to catch up.

It’s not out of the realm of possibility that four of the five FAANG companies will have smartglasses on the market within a few years. Some will surely flop (RIP Fire Phone, we hardly knew thee), but more competition almost always drives innovation and adoption. “Eyeshare” is shaping up to be big tech’s next battleground.