We’ve known about the Vision Pro for over half a year (not to mention years of rumors), but Apple’s first “spatial computing” device is one of the biggest question marks in consumer electronics heading into the new year. When the $3,499 headphones were unveiled at WWDC in June, a release date of “early 2024” was given, but the company has not given more specific information since then.
Apple prognosticator Ming-Chi Kuo offered an early holiday gift on December 24, narrowing down what he believed to be a “late January/early February” release date for the system. The analyst said that the first batch of Vision Pro will be shipped to Apple in about a month, with total shipments for the year being about 500,000 units.
The company’s specific goals for this year remain an open question. About a month after the device was released, reports surfaced that Apple had lowered its expected number of units from about 1 million units to “less than 400,000 units.”
Even the updated 500,000 figure seems small for a company of Apple’s size and influence. Keep in mind that the company should ship more than 200 million iPhones this year.
Yet Vision Pro is widely considered the biggest bet of Tim Cook’s 12-year tenure as chief executive. Not only is it a completely new category and form factor for the company, but it’s also prohibitively expensive, even for consumers accustomed to paying more for Apple products. Add to that the fact that virtual reality has failed to live up to expectations for decades, and you’ve got an uphill battle.
Kuo called Vision Pro “Apple’s most important product in 2024.” That’s a hard statement to argue with, considering years of speculation and all the time and money the company has undoubtedly invested in these headphones.
