Experts reflect on the Apple Vision Pro: lessons in cost, comfort and marketing strategy

The device, first publicly unveiled during the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), was hailed by CEO Tim Cook as “the most advanced consumer electronics device ever created.”

It certainly seemed like something out of science fiction. The user-interface can be navigated using only one’s eyes, voice and fingers (no clunky remote control required), and wearers can navigate between augmented reality (AR) and fully immersive virtual reality (VR) using a small, built-in “Digital Crown” located on top of the goggles. “It’s like magic,” a narrator says during the WWDC demo video.

That roar has since faded to more of a whimper. Sales have failed to meet expectations, causing the company to reportedly cut back on production. One report from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, published in April, found that the company planned to cut its number of shipped units in the US for 2024 to as few as 400,000, compared to an expected cap of roughly twice that number. More recent reports claim that sales did not surpass 80,000 in Q2 of this year, and that figure is expected to fall by 75% during the current fiscal quarter.

Despite all of the grandiose enthusiasm that Apple was pouring into the Vision Pro at the time of its release, the company has since become relatively quiet about the device, turning most of its attention instead to Apple Intelligence, its new suite of generative AI offerings unveiled at this year’s WWDC. (The shift is not unlike that carried out by Meta, which seems to have turned much of its attention and investment away from its namesake, the metaverse, towards the direction of AI.)

So what happened?

The most obvious explanation for the Vision Pro’s lagging sales is its $3,500 price tag – far too steep of a cost for the average consumer (even the more affluent ones who are quick to buy the latest Apple products). That price also contrasts sharply with those of other mainstream virtual reality headsets; Meta’s Quest 3, for example, costs $500.

“At the product launch, [the Vision Pro] generated excitement right up until they said the price tag,” says Michael Gartenberg, a former senior director of product marketing at Apple who now runs his own technology consultancy firm. “That was a giant thud in the room, because this changed the whole nature of the product. This was not something that Apple was going to sell to the mass market.”

A June report from The Information, which cited sources involved in the devices’s manufacturing and supply, found that Apple is also focusing on releasing a cheaper model of the Vision Pro in late 2025 rather than on the next iteration of the headset.

According to Charlie Fink, an author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University specializing in VR and AR, Apple should have anticipated this thud and chosen instead to market the Vision Pro solely to developers: individuals and companies that would create apps for the device, which could then potentially lead the device into a more mainstream appeal. “Apple should not have marketed the Vision Pro as a consumer device,” he says. “It is clearly priced as – and best used as – a developer kit or a developer device.”

The headset weighs around 22 ounces and covers most of one’s face, making it difficult to do much other than use it from the security of one’s couch. And indeed, this was basically the limit of the use-cases that were displayed in last year’s WWDC introductory video. Users were shown sitting or gently pacing around at home, using the Vision Pro to, for example, watch movies, scroll through online articles or chat on a video call. More than a year later, it’s still a relatively rare experience to see somebody wearing one of the devices in public.

“I found that I can’t use one for maybe more than twenty or thirty minutes before it becomes really uncomfortable,” says Gartenberg, “which kind of limits the best thing that it does, which is being a $3,500 movie theater … this is a solution in search of some sort of problem to solve.”

Gartenberg sees the arc of the Vision Pro thus far as evidence of a loss of some of the creative genius that helped Apple in its early years to become the tech titan and tastemaker that it is today. The headset “really demonstrates that the era of Steve Jobs and his products are over,” he says.

Tipatat Chennavasin, an investor focused on early-stage VR and AR companies, takes the opposite view. Its commercial hiccups notwithstanding, he says, the Vision Pro demonstrates that Apple is “still innovative, it’s not resting on its laurels, [and] it’s still thinking about the future of computing.”

Chennavasin argues that it’s better to pan out one’s time horizon and regard the device’s first year or so on the market not as a flop, but as a spark that will ignite a broader and more pervasive cultural trend. “This is not necessarily about having the hugest [sales] numbers, but about getting developers excited and then testing use-cases to eventually find the things that stick for consumers in the long run,” he says. “I mean, of course, there’s still so many issues, [and] there’s a lot of room for improvement, but [Apple has] made a bold first statement with this device.”

And while the Vision Pro has not experienced a gold rush of brand investment like that which followed hype around the metaverse a couple of years ago, marketing experts have also urged patience, arguing that the device could become a cornerstone of mainstream culture once the cost is lowered and more viable, everyday use-cases are established.

The future of the Vision Pro, and of the mixed reality industry more broadly, will largely come down marketing strategy, according to Rosh Singh, managing director (EMEA) at Unit9, a production company that helps brands build experiences in VR and other digital mediums. “The problem we have – and it’s a positioning and awareness problem – is that there are preconceived ideas about what a headset does,” he says. “This is not white space.”

Headsets in general are largely associated with gaming, he says, and it will take a lot of marketing resources to reposition them from a niche, hobbyist device into the kind of everyday wearable tech that companies like Meta and Apple are envisioning.

“There needs to be a reset,” says Singh. “It’s about changing those perceptions that exist out there, those preconceived notions of quality, of … what the device is for.”

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