Despite the considerable support of large technology companies, virtual and augmented reality is still rather on the fringes of interest. Many people have been promising a change in this area since the arrival of the most advanced headset so far in the form of the Apple Vision Pro model.
And at first it really turned out to be a success, when people appeared in the streets with the new device on their heads and the company reported for a while that it was sold out. However, it now seems that the magic of the Apple brand has slowly faded with this device, and sales have not met the estimates of the company’s marketing experts.
That’s according to a recent write-up by Bloomberg Apple specialist Mark Gurman, in which he says that the relative failure of the glasses was one of the reasons why Frank Casanova, who led marketing efforts related to Vision Pro, is leaving Apple after 36 years. He has been working in this area at Apple since 2019, when he was appointed the first head of marketing for augmented reality.
Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reports that 200,000 units of the headset were produced in the first batch, which sold out within half a month. It was expected that another 700,000 to 800,000 devices would be sold out by the end of this year. However, according to him, the demand decreased rapidly, so Apple reportedly decided to limit the Vision Pro deliveries to 400 to 450 thousand units for the year 2024.
Apple cut orders ahead of the Vision Pro’s launch in non-US markets, which Kuo says means demand in the US market has fallen sharply below expectations.
“Apple is reviewing and adjusting its product plan for head-mounted displays, so there may not be a new Vision Pro model in 2025 (previously, a new model was expected to appear in 2H25/4Q25). Apple now expects Vision Pro shipments to decline year-over-year in 2025,” writes Kuo on Medium.
Apple may thus rank alongside other companies such as Meta, Microsoft or HTC, which have failed to find sufficient support for their headsets for virtual and augmented reality. On the other hand, the company is just at the beginning, and it may happen that with the arrival of interesting applications, its Vision Pro will sell better.
Especially if there’s a cheaper variant coming out that will better compete with devices like the Meta Quest or the HTC Vive. According to some experts, the price of around 80,000 crowns is one of the main obstacles preventing a greater demand for glasses, even though they are probably the most technologically advanced on the market.
