Poor sales have reportedly forced Apple to cut production of the Vision Pro headset that it had hoped would herald a new era in “spatial computing”.
The tech company also reduced marketing for Vision Pro by more than 95% last year, according to the market intelligence group Sensor Tower in figures first reported by the Financial Times.
Apple continues to sell iPhones, iPads and laptops in the millions each quarter, but analysts say sales of Vision Pro headsets, which cost at least £3,199 ($3,499) each, have been sluggish.
Apple has not released sales figures for the device, but the market research group International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates it will have sold only 45,000 in the last quarter of last year.
When it was only rumored, the rumors said it was not expected to sell gangbusters. Rumors said that Apple considered it a sort of dev kit.
I don’t dispute things like weight, and limited software. But, Vision Pro, and VR, are a marathon, not a sprint.
Weird. There are like literal toys for 10% of the price which are more comfortable AND can effectivly do more things.
Apple made such stupid decisions with this headset. They used materials that made it heavy and did not give it PCVR capabilities out of the box.
I found it most weird they limited it to one single virtual display for their MacBook! wtf.
So many stupid decisions.
Alt title:
“Stupid crap no one asked for doesn’t sell”
I’d love a cheap headset you can connect to pc and use for virtual monitors. Just not at that price.
deleted by creator
But if anyone can pull that off it’s Apple.
The only successful thing they’ve come up with in the Cook era is the Watch and I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Jobs had been working on that before he popped his clogs.
I’m still not convinced that the Apple Watch is even technically a good product considering the price vs. features vs. durability vs. etc. comparison with all of its competitors. It’s a successful fashion accessory.
It seems a frequent reminder is required that Apple is not a tech company. They’re a marketing company, and a very successful one. Whatever it is they actually make is a side project compared to trying to convert it into a status symbol that’ll replicate the popularity of the iPod and iPhone.
lol if they really thought a face computer so big and bulky and limited and heavy would be a status symbol. I think they genuinely thought that they’d have people on planes wearing these making people jealous enough to fork the money, but it was never practical for that.
The Apple Watch is only a successful product because of the iPhone. It is just a convenient second screen for that, that also happens to track some useful health measures under a guise of privacy.
If Apple is forced (as they are in the EU) to allow third party devices like withings and garmin to interact with notifications as first class citizens, then Apple Watch sales will likely drop off a cliff. Or Apple will innovate. My bet is on the dropping off a cliff though.
No they didn’t lol it was essentially an expensive dev kit. They needed devs to make a ton of cool apps before it could reach mass appeal.
Obviously no one knows their internal sales projections, but I highly doubt they expected to sell a ton of them.
This article is literally about them cutting their projections of sales, so they clearly expected to sell more than they did / project to.
The comment I replied to was talking specifically about their belief that Apple wants things that are status symbols. I was stating it’s laughable if they wanted that for this device, because it was never an appealing device.
The article is a ton of assumptions based on a single fact. Apple cut production of Vision Pro.
Do you think apple expected to keep production at the same levels since the time of release?
Every single product they make produces at maximum levels close to release, and then ramps down as time goes on, minus a few exceptions. I would imagine apple didn’t expect one of their most expensive products to be an exception.
It seems like the article takes a single fact, and then tells you what to think.
You are correct about one thing, their belief that apple was expecting people to buy this simply as a status symbol is indeed pretty stupid.
It was weird that they thought they could sell enough of these at this price point for it to make sense to release it as an actual product instead of a dev kit at all. I don’t think anyone besides them and Apple fanboys looked at this and felt it made any sense from a business standpoint. Not even people who are very much committed to VR being the future.
AirPods
Yeah, OP said “successful thing” but I would make distinction of actual product vs an accessory to existing product. AirPods are essentially forced on you if you have iPhone, now that phone jack is gone. If you use other Bluetooth devices you just not perceived as “cool”.
Speaking of “cool” I think Vision Pro failed, because it makes one look like a tool. Not only looks bad, but they also spent 3.5 thousands on it.
I would argue that Apple Watch is also just an accessory to the iPhone.
What do you consider a success?
I’d say a single product generating more revenue than the entirety of a company like Nintendo, or Spotify, a success.
If it was a pcvr headset with controllers in the box, it would’ve sold much better.
Today a half price M2 with psvr2 controllers is a pretty good deal imo. I’ve seen that the galaxy XR underperformed as well. Like 15K units sold in the US and south korea. I’m sure they will sell a lot once they start selling worldwide but they are still far from the 100K units they prepared to sell in the first year.
