Apple's Vision Pro Won't Cross 500,000 Sales This Year, IDC Says (bloomberg.com) 59
Apple's biggest new product in years is not expected to shake off its slow sales start until the release of a cheaper model next year. From a report: The $3,500 Vision Pro mixed-reality headset has yet to sell 100,000 units in a quarter since its launch in the US in February, and it faces a 75% drop in domestic sales in the current quarter, according to market tracker IDC.
The gadget's international launch at the end of June will offset weakness in the US. A more affordable edition -- which IDC estimates would cost roughly half as much -- should rekindle interest in 2025, but sales may not rise meaningfully over the coming year, IDC said. "The Vision Pro's success, regardless of its price, will ultimately depend on the available content," said Francisco Jeronimo, vice president at IDC. "As Apple expands the product to international markets, it's crucial that local content is also made available."
The gadget's international launch at the end of June will offset weakness in the US. A more affordable edition -- which IDC estimates would cost roughly half as much -- should rekindle interest in 2025, but sales may not rise meaningfully over the coming year, IDC said. "The Vision Pro's success, regardless of its price, will ultimately depend on the available content," said Francisco Jeronimo, vice president at IDC. "As Apple expands the product to international markets, it's crucial that local content is also made available."
shouldabeen glasses (Score:3)
I think the problem is that any lesser version likely misses the mark, so a cheaper/lesser version could be worse for apple.
I just don't think enough people are willing to 'wear' these. I'm not saying occasionally use, but occasional use is a toy. WEAR it for work etc is a big ask....
These need to be 'google glass' with apple tech before they're successful...
Re:shouldabeen glasses (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that most tech companies would kill for being able to sell 400,000 units of their product in a year, especially if they cost $3,500 each.
Hell, Apple might even be coming close to recouping their R&D costs on a 1st generation product. And even if they killed the product now, they would probably make their remaining investment back on patent trolling future competitors in the space. Only an ultra profit focused CEO like Tim Cook would call that a "failure".
Re: (Score:2)
I think that most tech companies would kill for being able to sell 400,000 units of their product in a year, especially if they cost $3,500 each.
This!
I know this might be small money by Apple standards but how many of these units were they really expecting to sell considering both how niche VR still is and with how expensive their VR set is? I mean, a person can buy one hell of a nice TV for the price of one of these and the entire household can use it at the same time to boot.
Re: (Score:2)
To put things into perspective, the Quest 3 "sold an estimated 900K-1.5M units in its Q4 2023 launch, and Quest 2 finally gained an install base over 20M (based on Meta's earnings report)"
(according to the google)
Re: (Score:2)
Quests are a small fraction of the cost per unit and have been out for many years, it's no surprise they have >40x the install base. It's not really a fair comparison but not entirely irrelevant either.
My perspective as an iPhone/Apple Watch/Mac-since-the-90s as well as a Valve Index user is that Apple's emphasis on the headphones-for-your-eyes use case is at best premature if not entirely wrongheaded. You can buy many flat screens with better visual fidelity and usage comfort for three and half grand, m
Re: (Score:2)
how many people bought them because 'Apple' sold them? Seems like sales have slumped on them and the excitement is gone. Not hearing a lot of praise about how they've changed the game or anything of the sort.
Re: (Score:3)
There is a difference between shipping and selling 400K units. The articles are stating shipping that many units. This is the first new device released under Tim Cook by Apple. In the decade since Steve Jobs died the first new device class being a failure is not something Tim Cook would admit to lightly.
Re: (Score:2)
Not quite, the Apple Watch came out in 2015, long after Steve Jobs was no longer running the company.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Only an ultra profit focused CEO like Tim Cook would call that a "failure".
They are all ultra-profit CEOs. One of my bosses was telling me about a successful and profitable business unit they had bought in Los Angeles. It was doing 100s of millions of dollars of business each year. They sold it as under-performing because it wasn't profitable enough. The level of profit that the company was making? A little over 10%.
The future didn't matter. Only what could be deposited in the bank next month mattered. I was so sad. It was a useful business that would have been a nice little profi
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Shipping does not equal selling.
Re: shouldabeen glasses (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
There's not a complete lack of interest in the product at all, Meta's Quests are quite popular and I still regularly use my Valve Index 5 years later. It's just that Apple priced themselves out of the market and don't specialize in the more compelling VR-exclusive use cases.
Re: (Score:2)
Costwise, their target market is way too small right now. For the price of a Vision you could buy 6 or 7 Meta Quest 3s and still have enough left over for a nice lunch.
That's likely because the cost of the Vision is meant to keep people away, not entice them to buy. It's meant to attract early adopters who will literally buy any shiny fucking thing, and the best part about early adopters is that they often don't complain much because they're used to bleeding-edge products filled with bugs.
I've read a lot on
Re: (Score:2)
I work on Vision apps. It's a cool device. It's a very different device than Quest, and it's got a lot of potential.
But it's just not ready for prime time. It's way too heavy. It gets tiring to use it too much.
Things mostly work as expected and it feels impressive, but things don't work often enough to get frustrating.
You can see a ton of potential in it for it to be something great down the line, but it's not there yet.
Right now it's a prototype. The tech behind it is advanced enough that it's possible to
Re: (Score:2)
I agree and hope you're right. pre-launch I was really excited to get something with an "Apple" touch. I have a quest 3, it's fine, it's not great to wear for very long, and it's not quite good enough for my needs of a work tool to replace monitors. Feels more like scuba goggles than classes. The price on the quest 3 is pretty appropriate I think.
Apple could be 2-3x the price of the quest 3 if they could make a mass-appeal model. *I* don't need to walk around with it on, but I would like to be able t
From the no $hit department (Score:2)
duh...
how many products has *oogle abandoned? (Score:2)
*pple Computers
Proudly going out of business since 1976!
Re: (Score:2)
Abandoned is different from absolute junk that should have never seen the light of day.
Re: how many products has *oogle abandoned? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, but I can't think of anything quite as egregious as this from Google.
Headsets are the issue (Score:3)
Not to mention the multitude of people like me who already wear glasses, and don't want to wear glasses on top of glasses.
The fundamental problem of VR/AR headsets is that they are headsets.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't need a camera on my glasses. AR's nice, but a floating display linked to a mobile phone app would be more than enough. Or linked to an ODB dongle so my car's gauges and alerts can be in my field of vision without looking away from the road.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I believe this is already a thing for motorcycles, but I prefer four wheels and a protective shell.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's got nothing to do with the price or even the content.
What? If these were $500 bucks and had great content they would flying off the shelves. I've used VR headsets before, the goggles are pretty far down the list for my issues with them in regards to why I havent bought in.
No one wants to wear a clunky headset or even glasses just to get a floating countdown over their boiling egg. It seems like a solution looking for a problem.
Really? This is your go to usage example? VR/AR makes for a poor egg timer so it's doomed to fail? Give me a break.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes but what is great content in AR?
The problem is that as far as I can tell it doesn't exist.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
VR I can see. I don't think it will ever be as big as phone gaming but I see the appeal and there's definitely cool stuff that's fun.
But for consumer headset AR, I've never seen a worthwhile use case.
Re: (Score:2)
Pokemon Go was a great example of AR in action and was absolutely huge for a while.
AR does seem like more a stretch to me than VR in terms of future usability but there are far more creative people out there than me so I'm not writing it off while it's still in what I would call its infancy.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, that's why I said "If". I think the game changing aps for either AR or VR wil be games some day but so far we havent gotten there yet.
Re: (Score:2)
It's got nothing to do with the price or even the content.
It's EXACTLY the price and the lack of content that keep the Vision Pro from selling in large numbers. That's a horrible combination. It's also Apple's inexplicable desire to include tethers in a market that hates them, and the absolutely wretched form factor of a fanny pack to hold the battery. What the fuck were they thinking?!
The fundamental problem of VR/AR headsets is that they are headsets.
Tens of millions of Quest users beg to differ. The Quest is FAR less expensive, and has a large catalog of great games. The biggest problem it has revolves around the segment of peo
Re: (Score:2)
Brain fart. I meant 2019.
Re: (Score:2)
It's also Apple's inexplicable desire to include tethers in a market that hates them, and the absolutely wretched form factor of a fanny pack to hold the battery. What the fuck were they thinking?!
The AVP has way more tech in it than Quest, and as a result it's a lot heavier. AVP without the battery is already noticeably heavier than Quest 3, and the battery weights over 50% what headset does. AVP in its current form feels pretty heavy on your head, and wouldn't be usable with the battery up there too.
Tens of millions of Quest users beg to differ. The Quest is FAR less expensive, and has a large catalog of great games. The biggest problem it has revolves around the segment of people who are prone to motion sickness. That it is a headset falls way, WAY down on the list of most peoples' objections.
I got my kids and myself Quests back in 1999, and VR has been our favorite form of gaming ever since.
AVP isn't for gaming. It's intended to eventually replace your laptop/phone/tablet. Think of it as a prototype for Minority Report style computers.
Re: (Score:2)
AVP isn't for gaming. It's intended to eventually replace your laptop/phone/tablet. Think of it as a prototype for Minority Report style computers.
And that's why it's dumb. You can buy 10 monitors for the price of one AVP and they'll have vastly superior visual fidelity and ergonomics. Meanwhile VR games are unlike anything outside of VR and not in a purely negative sense.
Re: (Score:2)
The Minority Report style interface is amazing for professional work that's dealing with 3D. Medical scans, CAD work, scientific visualizations all benefit tremendously from it. Seeing it as 3D instead of 2D is huge benefit, and being able to manipulate what you're seeing with your h
Half Price is Not Low Enough (Score:4, Informative)
Vision Pro failure is irrelevant (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
The question concerns whether Apple collected enough data to design a VR/AR device that people WILL want to use. Apple uses constructive failures to make devices that people actually want to use. I think they are going to write this off. I surmise that Apple has convinced itself that AR/VR will never be a large enough consumer product, regardless of form factor (i.e., headset, glasses, what have you). People want more reality, not less.
The problems with the device are numerous, but the biggest one is that other than first-party apps, there are basically no apps for these things outside of Apple Arcade. They talk about it being a spatial computer, but really, the only thing you can do with it is pay for a games subscription. Games for sale? Not many. Games for free? Almost none. Productivity apps? Not much. And the expectation that you'd be able to run iPad and iPhone apps on the thing has proven to be mostly a fantasy, because mos
Re: (Score:3)
I think you might not have all the information:
Productivity apps: Vision Pro-native Microsoft Office apps were announced day one.
iPad and iPhone apps: It runs them. All of them. Unless the app developer specifically opted out (Netflix, YouTube, Dropbox are the few that did). There's a way to make an iPad app a native Vision Pro app, adding a few affordances like infinite screen aspect, but compatible iPad apps run quite well out of the box.
Steam VR games: Runs 'em via ALVR (game hosted on PC).
Being a 96" vi
Re:Vision Pro failure is irrelevant (Score:4, Informative)
I think you might not have all the information:
I own one. I've looked in the store. It's downright meager, particularly when compared with the rich Mac app ecosystem.
Productivity apps: Vision Pro-native Microsoft Office apps were announced day one.
Whee. Renting an office suite. No thanks.
I guess there is a port of Open Office (AO Office on it). But the number of apps in that category was quite small last I looked, and for any given user, the odds that the specific app that they need will be there isn't all that great. It's not that there aren't any apps; it's that most people want to have seamless experiences, which means running the same apps in multiple places, or at least apps specifically designed to work together.
And of course, the three apps I use most lately (OpenSCAD, Finale, and clang) aren't available at all on iOS, much less VisionOS. I can't develop on it, I can't write music (compatibly) on it, and I can't do 3D solid modeling for 3D printing and CNC milling on it.
So I guess the point I was trying to make is that if you're selling something as a spatial computer, it really needs to do everything a computer can do, not just be an iPad on your head. I can't use an iPad to replace a computer, much less iOS minus whatever apps the developers have turned off.
iPad and iPhone apps: It runs them. All of them.
ROFL. No.
Unless the app developer specifically opted out (Netflix, YouTube, Dropbox are the few that did).
If so, I can't tell it from looking in the store. When I went to the games section, I just plain cried. Out of all the iOS games I play regularly, I only found one of them on Vision OS.
Steam VR games: Runs 'em via ALVR (game hosted on PC).
What percentage of people who buy Apple headsets also run Windows? My guess is that it's a very small number. Meanwhile, there's currently no ALVR for Mac [github.com].
Being a 96" virtual screen for an MMO on my Windows gaming machine: check, via Sunlight (server) and Moonshine (app). 90 fps, 3 ms latency.
So you're the one (Windows user).
Keyboard and trackpad are supported.
Sort of. Yes, you can use a physical keyboard and trackpad, but what the heck is the point of having a computer that you can carry on your head if you're tethered to a desk? That completely defeats the purpose. In much the same way, I can use it as a display for my Mac laptop, but again, if you're tethered to the machine for the keyboard, what's the point?
Cost in adjusted dollars: Half of the original Macintosh. (Seriously, we're spoiled by cheap computers)
I never complained about price. I complained about utility.
Will I be called a fanboi? Most certainly, but I own one, use it every day, productively, so I speak from experience.
I own one, too. It sits in its carrying bag in my room, mostly unused.
Re: (Score:2)
Still no killer apps. Does anyone actually want to use Microsoft Office with a bulky headset strapped to their head, and a tether to a charger because the battery won't get through a work day? Same with video streaming apps, does anyone really want that after the novelty wears off? You can buy a very nice TV and sound system for a fraction of the price of a Vision Pro.
How are you measuring 3ms latency? Because to be honest it sounds like nonsense, given that the image needs to be video encoded, transmitted,
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The question concerns whether Apple collected enough data to design a VR/AR device that people WILL want to use.
What Apple should have learned, and what we all know already, is that statistically nobody wants big bulky goggles with video passthrough, and what everyone wants is glasses that you can see through with reality overlay for AR features, but also with maximum 100% opacity for VR use. And if there must be a cable, it must be thin and light.
Apple's device is the very opposite of all of those things, and what's more, we already knew all of those things before Apple made it. How Apple didn't figure those things
Re: (Score:2)
People want more reality, not less.
For greater than 50% of the population, reality sucks HARD. They drink and do drugs to escape it. VR/AR could supplement the effects of drugs and alcohol. The only reality that people want is good reality. The corruption in our system from aggregating wealth into the hands of a few has bitten greater than 80% of the population. It is only going to get worse. Apple should capitalize on that, not give up. Oh wait, none of these folks have the cash on hand to buy one of these devices. Yeah, give it up Apple...
Absence of feces? (Score:2)
Remember that Slashdotter who predicted 100 million headsets in use by now? Or he'll snack on his undergarments?
Yeah me neither.
Quest 3 has stolen it's thunder.. (Score:2)
I Don't 'Get' VR (Score:2)
It's fun for a minute, but I don't see a lot of people picking these up, ever. No matter how hard Zuck, or Apple wants it.
I never see any gaming YouTubers using them, so even if people buy them, no one really likes them. Even the U.S. military wouldn't buy the HoloLens AR headset, and they have more money than god!
Driving and Flying Sims are great for VR (Score:3)
First, the games on VR generally suck. The Quest 2 was only seeing rare use at best.
Then I got a sim racing wheel. Playing Asseto Corsa and other racing games in VR is amazing, even with the Quest 2. There needs to be more fun driving games that would widen the target market, not everyone wants to race. Forza is closer to what I'm thinking, but it's not as general as I'm thinking (there was an old MS game from around 2000 that was awesome driving around San Fran doing stunts).
The key is that the control structure is dedicated and familiar and can be used effectively in VR. The wheel allows me to map out major functions so I can restart things or change certain settings right there.
I know a couple of people that do the same with flight simulators (with better headsets and full flight control surfaces, MS Flight Sim).
It's not a general "killer app" because it's not cheap to setup but it's a fantastic use of VR (I haven't tried a triple screen setup for sim racing but VR is more immersive, especially the sound scape - and it doesn't take up any space).
I had been developing controllerless games for the Quest 2 before moving into AI. I found no controls far more intuitive and fun than the controller based games:
Hands of Chaos demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:3)
So actually 50,000 more than expected (Score:2)
IOW Apple is shipping (anf likely selling) all Vision Pros they can make.