Company scales back production of $3,500 VR headset amid lackluster sales, customer complaints
They didn’t see this coming.
Apple is significantly scaling back production of its initially popular Vision Pro headsets, and may even cease making the item by the end of the year, The Information reports.
The augmented reality device sold out of its January presale before customers found the expensive wearable technology clunky and headache-inducing after its release on Feb. 2.
Production of the product — with a sale price that starts at $3,499 — has reportedly been cut to 1,000 units per day, down from close to 2,000.
Apple Insider reported that the company only sold around 370,000 headsets in the first three quarters of 2024 and anticipate that only another 50,000 units will sell by January.
With those numbers, manufacturer Luxshare is looking at about 200,000 surplus units of its estimated 500,000 to 600,000 total.
Part of Apple’s thought process is to have excess units and headset parts on standby for future demand.
CEO Tim Cook told The Wall Street Journal last month that most consumers may not be ripe for the Apple innovation.
“At $3,500, it’s not a mass-market product,” he said. “Right now, it’s an early-adopter product. People who want to have tomorrow’s technology today — that’s who it’s for. Fortunately, there’s enough people who are in that camp that it’s exciting.”
“Obviously I’d like to sell more,” the boss added. “But there’s a limit to the number of faces this version of the Vision Pro will be on.”
Some users have complained that Vision Pro has difficulty fitting on their faces, while others say the device has caused head and neck pain.
Some have even said their headset gave them black eyes.
Despite the seemingly lacklustre sales, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo posted to X that Apple is still readying to give the product a successor.
Next year, Apple will purportedly produce a new headset with an enhanced processor; however, a cheaper model seems to be on hold until at least 2027.
“I think what really drove Apple to delay the cheaper Vision Pro is that simply reducing the price wouldn’t help create successful use cases,” Kuo wrote.
The Post has contacted Apple for comment.
