Three months on since the Vision Pro mixed reality headset went on sale and Apple\u2019s first new hardware device in years may already be running into headwinds.<\/p>\n
Ming-Chi Kuo, an Apple<\/a> analyst with connections into its Asian supply chain, wrote on Tuesday that his channel checks with component manufacturers reveal that the tech giant is grealty tempering its expectations and now expects to sell between 400,000 and 450,000 units this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cDemand in the U.S. market has fallen sharply beyond expectations,\u201d he\u00a0posted<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0Medium<\/em>, adding the market consensus had been between 700,000 and 800,000.<\/p>\n Since Apple doesn\u2019t publish a forecast for Vision Pro sales, and did not respond to a\u00a0Fortune<\/em>\u00a0request for comment, it\u2019s difficult to verify his claims. <\/p>\n However, the viral excitement surrounding Vision Pro\u2019s launch in early February and its claim to launch a \u201cnew era of spatial computing\u201d have tempered considerably.\u00a0<\/p>\n First time I tried Vision Pro: Damn this display is amazing and the eye tracking is like magic and this feels very future and also it\u2019s a little heavy <\/p>\n Second time: immersion factor is still so high. Special videos are hit or miss, you gotta get the distance right. And wow this\u2026 https:\/\/t.co\/iqSvs1e8LD<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) January 16, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Garry Tan, CEO of Silicon Valley\u2019s best-known startup accelerator Y Combinator, posted on Wednesday about his frustration with using Vision Pro while working.<\/p>\n \u201cDo people at Apple actually even dogfood this?\u201d he\u00a0wrote<\/a>, using a tech industry term for developers testing out their own products.<\/p>\n If Apple loses a tech expert like Tan then, to borrow his words, \u201cit\u2019s not going well.\u201d<\/p>\n The field of extended reality (XR), an umbrella term encompassing all forms of the technology including MR and VR, has struggled to carve out a niche for itself beyond the very earliest adopters.\u00a0<\/p>\n The gain headsets provided have not been sufficient for mainstream buyers to justify the steep upfront cost of purchasing a Sony<\/a> PlayStation VR or Meta Quest.\u00a0<\/p>\n As long as interest was muted, third-party developers were often hesitant to invest the extra resources to design even ported applications and software, let alone bespoke ones that would fully exploit the hardware\u2019s capabilities. <\/p>\n And as long as there was no compelling content they couldn\u2019t already find elsewhere, consumers had little reason to care.<\/p>\n Demand for the Quest, formerly sold under the Oculus brand, has been so tepid compared to the $45 billion in\u00a0accumulated metaverse losses<\/a>\u00a0that Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg decided to\u00a0license his operating software to other headset manufacturers to spur growth of the overall XR ecosystem.<\/p>\n It was hoped that Apple, with its instant brand recognition and enormous market influence, would end the chicken-and-egg dilemma that has long handicapped the industry.<\/p>\n This is crazy: We always talk about the “chicken or the egg” problem for XR apps & hardware\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026it does not appear that the AVP v1 (aka dev kit) has ignited the XR app ecosystem as we might have hoped pic.twitter.com\/4JpHE56aEz<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Troy Kirwin (@tkexpress11) April 17, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n But the device has been criticized for being excessively expensive and uncomfortable\u2014YouTube<\/a> reviewer Marques Brownlee emphasized three times how heavy it is. <\/p>\n In a worrying signal that Apple has not yet succeeded in convincing people that developing tools for their headset is worth the effort, data indicates the cadence of new releases for Vision Pro apps is also steadily dropping.<\/p>\n \u201cThe challenge for Vision Pro is to address the lack of key applications, price and headset comfort without sacrificing the see-through user experience,\u201d Apple analyst Kuo warned.\u00a0<\/p>\n There was some silver lining news, however. <\/p>\n Even as Meta forecast on Wednesday that annual operating losses at its Reality Labs segment would increase \u201cmeaningfully<\/a>\u201d year-over-year as it keeps investing, it said divisional sales jumped by nearly a third thanks to sales of Quest headsets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
The XR space is struggling to gain mainstream traction <\/h2>\n
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New Vision Pro app releases have plummeted\u2026<\/p>\n