Apple had to make big changes to its production plans for the mixed-reality Vision Pro headset, which was released last month after seven years of development and was hailed as the company’s most important new product since the iPhone.
Targets have been lowered, and plans for a cheaper version of the device have been put on hold, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the manufacturing process.
Apple has already said that the $3,500 “spatial computing” headset won’t go on sale until “early next year,” which is a long time after its launch on June 5. Analysts think this has more to do with problems in the supply chain than with giving developers more time to make apps for the Vision Pro.
Vision Pro faces production setbacks, expects lower sales figures
Two people who know Apple and Luxshare, the Chinese company that will make the device first, said that it was planning to make fewer than 400,000 units in 2024. Several people in the business world said that Luxshare was Apple’s only current gadget maker. Two China-based companies that make certain parts for the Vision Pro and are the only ones to do so said that Apple only asked them to make enough for 130,000 to 150,000 units in the first year.
Both estimates mean that production will be cut by a lot compared to an earlier internal sales goal of selling 1 million units in the first 12 months. Analysts and industry experts say that Apple’s lack of faith in its ability to scale production is a result of years of missed dates for launching the device.
Wall Street experts’ predictions for how many Vision Pros will be sold in the first year range from a few hundred thousand to several million. Wedbush expected that Apple would sell about 150,000 headsets in the first year. Morgan Stanley thought it would sell about 850,000, and Goldman Sachs thought it could sell as many as 5 million by 2024. Apple, on the other hand, sold 1.4 million iPhones in its first year.
Cheaper model held back
Last year, supply chain expert Ming-Chi Kuo said that Apple was working on a cheaper headset for 2025, probably something other than the Apple Vision Pro.
Wayne Ma of The Information said earlier this year that this cheaper model could cost “around the price of the iPhone.” The latest iPhones cost between $800 and $1600, and Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said it could use an A-series iPhone processor instead of the more expensive M-series Mac chips.
“Two people with direct knowledge,” told the Financial Times today that Apple will get microdisplays for this cheaper headset from Samsung and LG, but that the release date “had to be pushed back,” likely to 2026.
In 2021, LG said it was making 3K and 4K OLED microdisplays for VR. In May, Samsung bought the American microdisplay company eMagin, which was also making a 4K OLED microdisplay for VR, claiming “significant growth potential” in XR products.
Apple and Meta may end up competing for supply, though. As of November, Mark Zuckerberg’s company was said to be in talks with both LG and Samsung to get microdisplays for its own future headsets and glasses.
Read more:
- Apple can’t sell Vision Pro without Huawei’s permission: Here is why
- Quality Vision Pro alternatives without breaking the bank
- Apple Vision Pro battery pack debate: Is 2 hours enough?
Featured image credit: Apple
