Apple has certainly carved out a market for itself for selling well-made products at ridiculously high prices. With audiences willing to shell out mind-boggling sums for their laptops and phones, it's perhaps no surprise that the company thought they could do the same in a cursed world. VR with the $3,500 Vision Pro mixed reality goggles. Except, according to reports received, it could not. The Vision Pro is said to be no longer in production.
All this is based on a report from October 2024 on The Information (a site that apparently charges $300 to $1,000 a year to read its articles) said, based on multiple sources, that Apple would be discontinuing production of the Vision Pro as that the year ended, with the backlog of unsold machines. There was also a rumor of a cheaper model going into production to replace the previously planned second version of the Pro, possibly for a late 2025 release.
The Vision Pro's failure to set the world on fire is perhaps somewhat predictable. Not only does nobody really want mixed headphones for their working life, but they especially don't want to pay the price of a second-hand car At $3.5k, you'd hope the Vision Pro would come with a slew of absolutely essential apps and utilities, and, after all, it didn't either.
Back in October, The Information their sources at component manufacturers told the site that they provided enough parts for more than half a million headsets, with “tens of thousands of undelivered parts” filling the suppliers' warehouses. It was said at the time that Apple had sold 370,000 Vision Pros – a figure that looks very optimistic, but which is said to represent only two-thirds of the stock produced. Compare that to the millions of units that Meta has moved its Meta Quest VR headsets, at a seventh of the price of Apple technology.
If all this is proven to be correct, it means that Apple is not yet making new Vision Pros, because not enough people saw the reason to pay such a fee for such a pointless piece of technology. As MacRudy identifyApple had reportedly initially asked its Chinese manufacturer to expect to make eight million Vision Pros, meaning it is likely to sell one-twentieth of what it originally expected. The reports say that Apple has told the manufacturer to expect to make half as much for the next, cheaper version of the AR headset which, although it suggests a significant drop in expected even at a cheaper price, still looks very unlikely.
Meta's relative success with the Quest VR headsets in 2024 seems to be due to finding that sweet price point of $300 to $500, where people are more willing to take a gamble on a piece of unproven technology. Arguably, Apple could still find its niche in this space, if it can get things down to $1,000 and capture the business market that feels obligated to jump on gimmicks, meaning overworked people in hot suits have to watch virtual Power Point presentations until they go. they quit their jobs and take up macrame.
We've reached out to Apple for comment.
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