Kuo, a respected figure in supply chain leaks and analysis, says in and in a new blog post that Apple has cut 2024 shipments for Vision Pro to 400–450k units—significantly lower than the reported 700–800k units or more expected for worldwide production this year.
“Apple cut orders before launching Vision Pro in non-US markets, which means that demand in the US market has fallen sharply beyond expectations, making Apple take a conservative view of demand in non-US markets,” Kuo says in the post.
AR\VR developers seem a little out of touch with how much their market size for luxury goods is.
I don’t think the consumer side is where they expect long-term demand to come. The Department of Defense and some businesses want AR (and VR for training) and Apple now has a fuckton (1.016 metric fucktons) of patents.
Remember when Microsoft did that whole HaloLens trial with DoD and it made soldiers nauseous and generally just wasn’t good enough? Well, someone is eventually going to get that contract. Apple itself doesn’t go for military or intelligence agency contracts but I’m sure they’d be willing to license their patents to someone who will.
The Vision Pro targets a niche within a niche within a niche: people that can and want to afford it, that are interested in VR/AR, but are not interested in playing actual VR games and use it to mostly watch 2D videos on it.
Gaming is a proven use case for VR/AR (basically the only one), but Apple doesn’t seem to wanna go there. And I don’t think it would work at that price even if they wanted to.
I hope they stick with it though and make it cheaper, lighter, and get rid of that tethered battery. Excited to see what’s coming in that space.