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While tech giant Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL ) is making headlines on the back of reports that it is set to enter the smart glasses space, another company is in the latter stages of bringing to market a technology comparable to that which Apple is seeking to develop.

Vuzix Corporation (Nasdaq: VUZI), one of the leading entities in the glasses and wearable technology space, but one that remains under the radar (as a result of the strength of its competitors' brand names) is working to distribute and retail its 2nd Generation smart glasses, the M300 model.

This under the radar reputation is not going to last long, however.

Before we get into why let's get familiar with the company and its legacy products.

Founded in 1997 by Paul Travers, with headquarters in Rochester, NY, the company is renowned for its innovation and exceptional quality viewing experience in the arena of wearable personal display devices, utilized for virtual (VR) and augmented reality (AR). In 2015 alone Vuzix received four Consumer Electronics Show Innovations Awards, bringing the total to more than twenty since the company’s inception – with select products recognized as the “world’s best innovations” in their category.

In the development and production of smart glasses, Vuzix took the lead ahead of companies like Alphabet Inc (Nasdaq:GOOGL), which readers will likely remember tried to popularize Google Glass, and failed. The M100 model, the world’s first commercially available smart glasses (and that succeeded where Google and its Google Glass failed), are Vuzix’s flagship product (for now). Technologically advanced, powerful and lightweight, the M100 model were designed for application to a variety of industrial, medical, and retail applications. One major reason why Google Glass flopped, and aside from the patchy rollout and lack of any real world applications to support use, was its bulky size; specifically, the image projection technology necessitated a bulky and inconvenient design. Vuzix designed its M100 to be lightweight, and slimline and has spent the last half decade building on this design to create the above-mentioned 2nd generation M300 model.

Vuzix developed the M300 by utilizing customer feedback from two years of use with its M100 model; feedback that led to improvements in the functional design, comfort, durability, and battery life of the wearable. The M300 line runs the new Intel Atom driven Android 6 platform and possesses other new features and upgrades that allow it to be more user-friendly too, such as a touch pad, a speech recognition engine, gesture control, GPS, and Bluetooth 4.0. The glasses’ monocular display and onboard processor provide expandable memory, data collection, Wi-Fi, and recording features. The M300 model also comes with pre-installed applications, such as a calendar, a phone, an HD camera and the ability to track timed events and use as a bar code scanner. The battery runs for up to three hours at high usage – and can be extended to six hours by way of a micro USB connector pack.

Along with the new range of other features, the M300 possesses, the focus has been directed toward increasing the Glasses’ potential for commercial and industrial application, as mentioned above.

Right now commercial and industrial is where the revenues are, and that's why Vuzix has succeeded where others have failed, and are failing.

Commercially, the M300 model is used to improve the speed and efficiency of picking in warehouses, a process for which – under a real life testing environment – the glasses demonstrated a 25% efficiency increase. In construction monitoring, they have allowed contractors to show clients progress in real time, on site, from a remote location. In industry, they have altered and improved, the functionality of warehousing, shipping, and logistics. Manufacturing operations (including automobile, commercial aircraft, and electronics production) have been improved through error reduction, decreased cycle times, and a lower cost of goods, by leveraging guided workflows on the production line. Industries looking to take advantage of the M300 line (including any interesting in two-way video, such as service organizations, telemedicine, and global gas, oil, and mineral exploration companies) can utilize applications such as bar code scanning and real-time information and data access.

Over the past several months, Vuzix has sent out its Design Validation Test (DVT) (production models going through the final certification procedures) units of the M300 to VIP developers and select enterprise customers. Vuzix’s M300 Smart Glasses VIP Program is an invitation only opportunity for a limited number of Vuzix’s most successful M100 software application developers; developers who are invested in expanding smart glasses technology in enterprise environments, and the opportunity to leverage significant financial, marketing, technology, business support, and incentives. These partnerships are vital for the continued development of real world applications for the M300 line, and mean that Vuzix and these companies both have a vested interested in the successful implementation of this second generation. Again, this is why Google failed, and why Vuzix is succeeding.

According to the company’s official announcement, the M300 DVT has already been shipped to more than 50 VIPs, including: Ubimax, DHL, SAP, GE, Boeing, NTT DoComo, NS Solutions Corporation, INC XOEye Technologies, APX Labs, Pristine, and AMA. Furthermore, the company is currently offering an M100 to M300 Migration Package: Clients can purchase the M300 glasses now, and the company will dispatch the M100 immediately in their place. When the M300 begins commercial shipment, slated for before the end of the year, Vuzix will swap the M100 for a new M300 at no additional charge – a win-win for customers and the company.

As a preferred partner in the Vuzix Industrial Partner Developer Program, Ubimax received the M300 DVT and shared the Glasses with (their) customers currently using the M100 technology – including shipping giant DHL and automaker Daimler – to enable users could become acclimated with the new technology before full-scale production. Ubimax is known for pioneering Smart Glasses’ applications. The company developed the first Enterprise Wearable Computing Suite of industrial applications (originally for the M100), which included: xMake for manufacturing, xInspect for maintenance, and xAssist for remote assistance. According to (Vuzix CEO) Travers: “We’ve seen the tremendous efficiency-lift that the Ubimax solution offered with the M100. With the M300, we expect to achieve even greater productivity improvements. Given the results we anticipate, we are confident that DHL and many more Ubimax customers will implement operational usage of the M300 in ever increasing numbers.”

All this is just the beginning, however, and lays the foundation for our key point – Vuzix's position as lead in an industry within which its competitors are literally years behind. Reports suggest that the Apple product, the above-mentioned glasses that are rumored to be in development, are incorporating a technology called waveguide.

Waveguide technology removes the need for a reflector prism to magnify and flip the image into the users' eye, and it's this prism that causes a lot of the size issues and focal limitations we saw with the Google Glass. Waveguide technology beams the image directly into the user's eye, without any need for resizing or flipping, and that's where the advantage lies. Apple recognizes this, and there's a company called Magic Leap that is also developing a wearable based on the tech (for reference, Magic Leap is a private entity valued at $4.3 billion).

Both of these companies are attracting a lot of attention for their development lines, and generating hype across the space, but all the while, Vuzix has its own version of the technology pretty much ready to go. A product announcement should come between now and the close of 2016, and a commercial launch is slated for early to mid-2017. The product is the M3000, and it's essentially the M300 with the waveguide technology applied to its construction. This means it has a base of commercial and individual use applications already in place, ready to go on the Android operating system on which the technology runs. Apple's product will run on an Apple OS, and it's going to take years for a developer community to bring a base of applications to market that comes anywhere close to that which is already available for the M3000. To put this another way, Vuzix's M3000 is not just comparable to the proposed Apple product from a technological, and in turn, specifications, perspective, but it's probably three years ahead of it in terms of usability based on the applications available right now for it to run.

Yet still, the company remains under the radar. It's market capitalization of $156 million is one tenth that of Magic Leap's, and Magic Leap doesn’t even have a product ready yet.

When iPhones hit shelves ten years ago, they revolutionized the way we communicate, and share, transfer, and manage information. If industry experts are to be believed, smart glasses are poised to do the same during the coming ten years. With its M300 consumer rollout set to begin before the end of the year, Vuzix will become the only company to have a second generation device available commercially. When the M3000 hits next year, it will become the only company to have a commercially available set of smart glasses that rely on waveguide technology. It's application base already makes it the only company to offer usability that rivals anything close to that of other devices, wearable or otherwise.

Yes, it's got its risks. Cash isn’t great, and the company has a runway that probably won’t last through mid-2017. A raise, therefore, is a certainty, near term. Revenues on the legacy products have dipped over the last twelve months, and while this is due to the delay in purchases ahead of the upgraded M300 release (Apple experiences a similar thing with its iPhone release schedule) it's playing in to market sentiment. With the rollouts slated for 2017, however, and the ramp up in sales expected on the back of these rollouts, it can only be a matter of time before Vuzix revalues to a more accurately representative capitalization.