Top analyst sees a negative outlook
Apple Vision Pro is apparently not the hoped-for success
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Demand for the Vision Pro is apparently much lower than hoped, and the best-known Apple analyst is expecting orders to be significantly reduced this year and next year. This could mean, among other things, that there will be no successor device, at least for the time being.
Apple took a big risk with the Vision Pro. Tim Cook & Co. put almost everything on the data glasses as the next big thing and even scaled back the development of other devices to make it happen. But the Vision Pro is apparently not as successful as the company had hoped, even though expectations were comparatively very low.
The extremely accurate analyst Ming-Chi Kuo writes on “Medium” that Apple only expects to ship 400,000 to 450,000 devices this year. Previously, it was generally assumed that the company would be able to sell almost twice as many data glasses in 2024, with 700,000 to 800,000 units.
“Absolute niche product”
Kuo himself has always been more cautious. Most recently, in February, he predicted that Apple would be able to sell around 500,000 Vision Pros this year. The device is simply an “absolute niche product,” he explained his reticence. Last September, he wrote that the question is why users need this product. It could take longer than the market expects for the Vision Pro to become the next star product after the iPhone.
So Apple is once again faced with the challenge of creating demand that didn't exist before. A big problem is the high price of around $3,500, Kuo wrote. “Unless Apple significantly lowers the price of the Vision Pro, the expected significant increase in shipments from 2025 onwards may not occur.”
In December, the analyst wrote more optimistically that the Vision Pro would be Apple's most important product in 2024. If user feedback is “better than expected,” it could potentially convince the market “that the Vision Pro is the next star product in consumer electronics.”
No successor in 2025
According to his latest Medium article, this scenario is not happening. Mark Gurman, who is also usually very well informed, also wrote on Bloomberg that instead of selling several devices per day, Apple stores are now only selling a few per week.
The reduced orders mean that demand in the US market has fallen “significantly short of expectations,” Kuo said. This means Apple is more cautious about assessing demand in markets outside the US. One consequence of this is that there may not be a successor model next year as expected, Kuo writes.
The challenge for Apple is to remedy the lack of important applications, reduce the price of the Vision Pro and increase comfort. Kuo specifically mentions the (augmented reality) AR properties of the glasses, where users see the environment into which virtual objects are integrated. Virtual reality (VR) is also a niche market, but at least there are proven successful products here.
