It's an $800m failure!
with failures like that who needs success?
with failures like that who needs success?
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Apple Has Sold Approximately 200,000 Vision Pro Headsets
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That comes out to less than $73/mo which is 1.2% of the average monthly expenses for a US household (from a BLS 2022 report).
Apple actually tends to provide more than 4 years of software support for their devices. They still support the iPhone 6s which was released back in 2015. Secondly, the AVP has a replaceable battery. Furthermore, Moore's law is winding down, so how "outdated" AVP is after 4 years will likely be down to the owner's subjective opinion.
Edit: vipergts2207 added the following to their post after I published my original response (above)
Yeah, 95% is definitely not right. The income distribution in the US is incredibly top-heavy. Still, AVP is accessible to a much larger percentage of the population than a lot of people realize.
I've found that a lot of people harbor a strange cognative bias regarding the affordability of consumer electronics. Back during the Occupy Wall St. demonstrations, people would post pictures on Reddit of a demonstrator with a mid-range Cannon DSLR or some other demonstrator with an iPhone and say, "If they're so disenfranchised, why do they have all this super expensive luxurious tech?!". Like, when you amortize the cost of such things over the life of the product, it's a fraction of what most people pay in for housing, food, medical, transportation, etc. A decent DSLR can be someone's living. Smart phones have offered an insaine value proposition for over a decade now.
The best frame of reference I can think of for understanding the value proposition of modern computers is this:
The most popular computer ever made was the Commodore 64 released in 1982 with a 1MHz 8-bit CPU and 64 KB of RAM. It sold for the equivalent of $1,800 in 2022 dollars and basically represents the point at which personal computers became cheap enough and capable enough for consumers to justify buying them. Since then they've gotten something like 100 million times faster (The A17 Pro is capable of ~2 TFLOPS vs. The C64's approximately 20 kFLOPS), 1 million times more memory, small enough to fit in your pocket, and connected to basically all of human knowledge.
With such a ridiculous value proposition, getting hung up on someone prefering a $700 iPhone vs. a $400 Android phone is like getting hung up if someone prefers Oreos vs. some store-brand knock off for half the price. A phone can easily be someone's most valuable posession in terms of how usefull it is, but that utility is not reflected in it's price. Case and point: Many homeless people have smart phones these days.
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I am not surprised and I believe they will hit a half a million target probably a few months after the official launch on the stores and way more when it will go global … This is a machine for pros and for the tech junkies and I believe millions are around … it remind me when I first saw an Apple IIc at the desk of my friend father . Super expensive and super cool and I have asked what is it for ? « I soon will discover it » he replied … Vision Pro is for the explorers …
Exactly. I bet many calling it a flop are just priced out of the product, so it's easier to knock it than admit that.
Human nature.
We all know Apple by now... slow and steady wins the race. They are not rushing this...
Amazing things are coming. This is just the foot in the door.
The HomePod is barely a fair comparison. It was a weak attempt at creating a new "Home" platform.
The Vision Pro is just the first hardware for an entirely new VisionOS platform.
They deliberately started with a "Pro" version because the hardware is so advanced, and aspects like battery life aren't quite there for casual consumer usage.
Watch Apple pay Taylor Swift to film videos of her wearing while in her flight from Tokyo to try to catch the Super Bowl in Vegas… or in Japan watching the game with it on.
“it’s like I’m right there... minus Travis’ beautiful beard!”
Millions of teenage girls will then beg their parents for the AVP!
“it’s like I’m right there... minus Travis’ beautiful beard!”
Millions of teenage girls will then beg their parents for the AVP!
The second attempt at HomePod and HomePod mini seem fine. Sometimes, the first attempt at a product just doesn't work well.
It's the first time I've heard of a "Pro" product having poor battery life. It could be just that the first iteration of Vision Pro isn't suitable for even sophisticated customers. But that's to be seen.
You can amortize over whatever period you like, $3500 isn’t a trivial purchase to most households, especially for a toy.
Always have to roll my eyes at the “you’re just jealous” argument. Now to be fair, it’s way too early to call this product a success or a flop. I’m sure we’ll hear reports coming in over the next few months indicating how it’s doing versus Apple’s expectations.
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Ming-Chi Kuo made that claim a week ago.
Today's claim ("upwards 200,000") is from "a source with knowledge of Apple's sales numbers" and includes an additional week's worth of sales. They aren't just rounding up the week old numbers.
For context, it’s about the same numbers as the 2nd gen Apple TV. First gen Apple TV was much lower. Apple always plays the long game. Everyone will be saying this was a fiasco in a couple of weeks, while we won’t even know until 3-5 years from now.
If it supposedly sold 180k on opening weekend to Apple fanatics (I don’t mean this in a bad way) and only 200k in total, that means it only sold like 20k since. That would be pretty bad in terms of steady sales no?
That is $7 billion recovered, i doubt they spend more than that on the RnD.
The early estimates were that Apple would sell around 80,000 at launch. Now that the number sits at 200,000 it is clear how off those pundits were. Apple will sell as many as they can make. On Saturday I will be using mine on a four hour plus flight. I will have my Bluetooth keyboard along in case I have to do any intensive typing. I plan to design some keynote presentations, and will very much appreciate the large displays while sitting on the airplane. That alone is worth $4000. I am also sure that I will enjoy watching the in-flight entertainment that I bring along or that is available through Wi-Fi on the plane on a huge screen, with my head in a comfortable position, leaning back in my seat, and if I choose, in my virtual movie theater.
The folks around me will see that, and become intrigued. They have never seen a VR unit on an airplane. This will become more and more common as the weeks progress. It will begin to define the entire space, and establish spatial computing as different from a VR headset. I am sure I will get questions, and I will be asked what I think. The momentum will grow, and Apple will sell many many more of these than anyone here can envision, even in the first year, that is, if they can make enough.
I am not an enthusiast, well, maybe a little, I am not a developer, I am not an influencer, I am not a scalper, I’m just a typical guy who wants life to be a little bit better, and a little bit more fun. We also forget that Apple is offering 12 months to pay for this thing at 0% interest.
As more sport viewing is added to the Apple Vision Pro, we will see even more people acquire them. My son said he would order two of them on the spot if he and his partner could watch championship tennis as if he were there, and would need no other reason to purchase one. It won’t be long until people feel completely left out if they don’t have one.
The folks around me will see that, and become intrigued. They have never seen a VR unit on an airplane. This will become more and more common as the weeks progress. It will begin to define the entire space, and establish spatial computing as different from a VR headset. I am sure I will get questions, and I will be asked what I think. The momentum will grow, and Apple will sell many many more of these than anyone here can envision, even in the first year, that is, if they can make enough.
I am not an enthusiast, well, maybe a little, I am not a developer, I am not an influencer, I am not a scalper, I’m just a typical guy who wants life to be a little bit better, and a little bit more fun. We also forget that Apple is offering 12 months to pay for this thing at 0% interest.
As more sport viewing is added to the Apple Vision Pro, we will see even more people acquire them. My son said he would order two of them on the spot if he and his partner could watch championship tennis as if he were there, and would need no other reason to purchase one. It won’t be long until people feel completely left out if they don’t have one.
*rolls eyes* I've read your other posts. You seem pretty reasonable. I know this rhetoric is beneath you.
1) It's got the potential to be way more than a "toy" and I think you know that.
2) It's not like entertainment provides zero value to people. The average houshold spends $288/mo on entertainment alone. I don't know about "most" households because the BLS report I have access to only gives the average as opposed to the median or quartile break-down, but $72/mo is still quite doable to a lot of people especially since it also has what is essentially a macbook built in which can function as much more than an entertainment device.
Note: I'm not the one who claimed it's affordable to 95% of people. I agree with you that's ridiculous. Lot's of people live paycheck-to-paycheck.
Still, I would estimate somewhere in the tens of millions of households could easily justify such a purchase.
I tried to put my order in but Zeiss won't accept prescriptions that include prism correction. Thank you Zeiss. You saved me 3,500 hard earned dollars (plus the cost of the corrective lenses - and - of course, the sales tax on all that).
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I wouldn't hold my breath for a dramatic increase in battery life in future revisions, but I honestly don't think the battery life matters as much as the weight. I think the "killer app" for AVP in the immediate future will be 1) entertainment and 2) mitigating the friction of remote collaboration in a work-from-home setting. I'm not sure how well AR can confer the benefits of working in the same space as one's co-workers. That'll be interesting to see and will likely depend on the nature of the work. However, for most people; it should be trivial to plug the thing in. It's not like anyone's going to be waltzing down the sidewalk with AR goggles on any time soon. Even if the technical limitations, like battery life, were overcome, I can't see it being socially acceptable for quite a while.
Not a chance. This is retail we are talking about. Margins are probably upwards of 100%
What’s the point of selling a million units if you are barely breaking even on each one, or making a net loss?
Does anyone here actually understand how business works?
The rest could be waiting to try it out at an Apple Store before committing to a purchase decision. Not forgetting this is only the US, and the Vision Pro hasn’t been available to the rest of the world yet.
You never heard anyone selling hardware at loss and making money on software , or selling at loss first to quickly gain users then upselling premium features or ads?
Because it clearly worked so well for the Meta headset and Amazon smart speakers. I know it’s a business model, but I am drawing a blank at companies who are actually doing it properly.
Apple in the very least doesn’t work that way, nor do they need to.
Depends on the products really. Vision Pro is unique, you can't compare it with Meta Quest even though some clueless people still categorised it as VR headset. It is entirely a new product, which is also expensive and hard to make. These two factors alone indicate that Apple didn't plan for large sales, also the target are mostly techs/devs for the first itinerary not your average dads/moms/grandpas.
I would say what makes the sales good/successful does not lie in any numbers but rather in the future: how much of this will impact the future development, how much of this will contribute to the ecosystem, interest, developers, etc. That will determine its initial sales sucess.