The death of Apple Vision Pro is greatly exaggerated. The dream, in fact, is only beginning.
That’s the assessment, albeit biased view, of John Gearty, who worked at Apple Inc. for a decade, most recently on the team behind Apple Vision Pro as an engineering program manager. He’s now CEO of PulseJetStudios, a VR-music experience service whose existence is predicated on the success of Apple’s new mixed-reality headset.
“Apple is on a slow roll to get this right,” Gearty said in an interview. “Apple is working with us to develop our app. They have jumped in and we are getting video support from them, and may get some marketing support.”
Apple’s huge investment of roughly $10 billion on the device comes with a “huge ramp” and [Apple] wants it to hit big,” he added.
But such a paradigm shift takes time — maybe a year or so, he said — to reach a larger audience. He compares it to generational movements in media like going from silent movies to sound, and radio to TV. “Video killed the radio star, remember?” Gearty said.
So far, reality isn’t paralleling the initial wave of hype around Vision Pro, Apple’s biggest gamble in years in a new product category.
The iPhone maker has “sharply scaled back” Vision Pro since early summer and “could stop making the existing version of the device entirely by year end,” according to a report in The Information, quoting people familiar with the matter.
“People who want to have tomorrow’s technology today — that’s who it’s for,” Cook told the Wall Street Journal. “Fortunately, there’s enough people who are in that camp that it’s exciting.”
“My take is that based on Cook’s comment, yeah they’ll probably do a lighter-weight, lower-cost product, maybe a Vision Pro Air,” Gearty said. “Meta Quest 3 was a high-level device and changed the sensors and flattened them as basic cameras to save costs. Now they have a $300 version.”
But for now, the heavy headset’s steep price and a paucity of apps severely undercut demand, leading to weak sales.
Apple sold around 370,000 headsets in the first three quarters of 2024 and is projected to sell another 50,000 by the end of the year, based on estimates from Counterpoint Research.
Meta Platforms Inc., by comparison, shipped about 6 million Quest 2s and 3 million Quest 3s in the first three quarters of this year after their respective launches, for as little as $300, Counterpoint said.
Luxshare, the Chinese manufacturer that handles final assembly of Vision Pros, could cease those operations in November, at the direction of Apple, an employee at the company told The Information. Luxshare pumps out about 1,000 Vision Pro units a day, about half the production from its peak, the employee said. Since production began last year, Luxshare has assembled between 500,000 and 600,000 headsets, the employee said.
At the same time, Apple has suspended work on a second-generation version of Vision Pro for at least a year, according to another person directly involved in the company’s supply chain.
An Apple spokesperson declined to comment.
SUB: Apple Fans are Willing to Pay a Premium
There is good news for Apple, which faced a similar challenge with Apple Watch. It, too, got off to a rough start after its introduction in 2014 but eventually gained traction among consumers as its price dropped and design changed.
“It (AVR) is a luxury indulgence that cannot be rationalized,” Dave Nicholson, chief research officer at The Futurum Group, said in an interview. “I got a headset as a present, but as a consumer in the upper income echelon, I would have wanted it as a luxury good. It is an awesome entertainment device now, but as soon as the immersive stuff comes out, it will be amazing. I use AVP as an extension of my Apple product universe.”
But first AVR must overcome two inhibitors, he said: Its exorbitant price and a “bulky, uncomfortable, unwieldy” form factor, Nicholson said.
“It will get cheaper, lighter, and come with more apps,” Nicholson said. “It will catch on and grow. Apple will sell a boatload as a media device for under $1,000.”
Apple enjoys another distinct advantage — loyal customers.
“They have consistently high standards and a ready market willing to pay for its products,” Guy Currier, an analyst at The Futurum Group who covers vendors’ product positioning, said in an interview. “Vision Pro faces an overall market challenge for augmented reality. There is a social and societal impact that makes it a harder sell. Industrial use [of mixed-reality headsets] is completely different, which puts Apple at a disadvantage as a consumer play.”
Gearty says more content is on the way, slowly but surely. [Meta CEO Mark] Zuckerberg invested in all the games for Quest,” he said. “Apple needs to be have more content people like me. And Apple is developing content, and putting it out. They just released Submerged (the first scripted film captured in Apple Immersive Video) in 180 degrees. Sports will be bigger, such as soccer, and also in 180 degrees. This stuff is coming.”
