Smart Glasses Hit 5-Hour Daily Wear, Beat Earbuds

People wearing smart glasses now log an average of five hours a day with them on, according to a new report from Qualcomm Technologies, more than most users spend with earbuds in. The finding comes from a survey of over 12,000 people across the U.S., U.K., Germany, India, Brazil, and China, commissioned to track how personal AI is moving from novelty to habit inside wearable devices.

The shift isn't just about screen time, or in this case, glasses time. Respondents described a change in what they expect these devices to do. Earlier generations of wearables mostly pushed notifications from a paired phone.

The devices in this report carry built-in intelligence that tracks where a user is, what they're looking at, what they're hearing, and how their day is structured. That's a different job than buzzing a wrist when a text comes in.

Qualcomm's researchers frame this as a move away from generic AI tools toward something built around the individual wearing the hardware. The question the report sets out to answer, across six countries, is what people actually want once a device stops being a passive accessory and starts acting like a companion that knows their habits and schedule.