It’s been three months since the Vision Pro mixed reality headset went on sale, and Apple’s first new hardware device in years may already be facing headwinds.
Ming-Chi Kuo, a Apple analyst with ties to its Asian supply chain, wrote Tuesday that its checks with component makers reveal the tech giant is significantly tempering its expectations and now expects to sell between 400,000 and 450,000 units this year.
“Demand in the US market has fallen beyond expectations,” he said. job has AVERAGEadding that the market consensus was between 700,000 and 800,000.
Since Apple does not release forecasts for Vision Pro sales and did not respond to a Fortune request for comment, it is difficult to verify his claims.
However, the viral excitement surrounding Vision Pro’s launch in early February and its claim to usher in a “new era of spatial computing” has subsided considerably.
First time trying Vision Pro: damn, this screen is amazing and the eye tracking is like magic and it looks very future and it’s also a bit heavy
Second time: the immersion factor is still just as high. Special videos are random, you have to find the right distance. And wow that… https://t.co/iqSvs1e8LD
– Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) January 16, 2024
Garry Tan, CEO of Silicon Valley’s best-known startup accelerator, Y Combinator, published an article on Wednesday about his frustration with using Vision Pro while working.
“Do the people at Apple even make dog food?” he wroteusing a tech industry term for developers testing their own products.
If Apple loses a tech expert like Tan, then, in his words, “it’s not going well.”
The XR space struggles to gain traction
The field of extended reality (XR), an umbrella term encompassing all forms of technology including MR and VR, has struggled to carve out a niche beyond very early adopters.
Delivered gain headphones have not been enough for traditional buyers to justify the high upfront cost of purchasing headphones. Sony PlayStation VR or Meta Quest.
As long as interest remained low, third-party developers were often reluctant to invest additional resources to build even applications and ported software, let alone custom ones that would fully exploit the capabilities of the hardware.
And as long as there wasn’t compelling content that they couldn’t already find elsewhere, consumers had little reason to care.
Demand for the Quest, formerly sold under the Oculus brand, has been lukewarm compared to the $45 billion invested. losses accumulated in the metaverse that Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has decided to license its operating software to other headset makers to boost the growth of the overall XR ecosystem.
It was hoped that Apple, with its immediate brand recognition and enormous market influence, would end the chicken-and-egg dilemma that has long handicapped the industry.
It’s crazy:
New versions of the Vision Pro app have dropped…We always talk about the “chicken or the egg” problem for XR applications and hardware…
…it doesn’t look like AVP v1 (aka dev kit) has ignited the XR app ecosystem like we might have hoped pic.twitter.com/4JpHE56aEz
–Troy Kirwin (@tkexpress11) April 17, 2024
But the device has been criticized for being excessively expensive and uncomfortable…Youtube reviewer Marques Brownlee has pointed out how heavy it is three times.
In a worrying sign that Apple hasn’t yet managed to convince people that developing tools for their headset is worth it, the data indicates that the pace of new versions of Vision Pro apps is also steadily declining.
“The challenge for Vision Pro is to address the headset’s lack of key applications, price and comfort without sacrificing the seamless user experience,” warned Apple analyst Kuo.
There was, however, some positive news.
Even though Meta forecast on Wednesday that the annual operating losses of its Reality Labs segment would increase »in a significative way“Year over year, as she continues to invest, she said her division’s sales have jumped by nearly a third thanks to sales of Quest headsets.
