Apple Mixed-Reality Headset Shipments Now Estimated to 'Fall Short of 100,000 Units' This Year

[farmboy]

Lower them expectations! Make it seem hopeless/doomed/DOA. Then dazzle.

Ladies & gentlemen: think about your comments here. No professional developer is going to spend valuable time & money developing for a product that may or may not later have someone to buy whatever they develop.

Money motivates all business efforts. Few to none will want to potentially waste lots of time, money & resources on something that only MIGHT yield a ROI down the road somewhere, when they can instead put those same variables towards opportunities with known and tangible upside.

ALL businesses, including software developers, spend valuable time and money developing products and businesses with only an educated guess as to future financial success. This is capitalism; looking forward is sine qua non. You take the risk in expectation of the reward. There's no shortage of risk takers. Why would you think this is different?

Apple, with rare exceptions, does its homework. The headset will launch with a rudimentary but multi-faceted OS and several third party apps, and initially it will indeed be geared toward early adopters and developers, who have always filled the marketplace with new software and products as opportunities present themselves. This will be no different, no matter the previous failures or what the device price is (the higher the device price, the higher your potential income for your contribution).

Even I can see the potential in this wide-ranging delivery system. In a few short years it will look cooler, be everywhere and doing everything, and Apple will have a significant share. Remember the iPhone and Apple Watch had a little bit of a bumpy developmental ride to start with, too.

Naturally, the EU powers that be will cry "Unfair!" and want it all given to them for free because risk and investment are fundamentally unfair.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I'm poking at this "herd mentality" that ONLY developers will be the market for this thing, NOT that it won't be a success and/or Apple can't make a good-to-great product. In many of these Goggles threads, I've been one of the seemingly few expressing consistent optimism for it... offering up "use cases" that seem very appealing... "problems" that this solution could solve... and so on. And I'm no fanboy- far from it- so that actually says more than how it reads at first glance.

Don't confuse me for the wall of pessimists who seem to think that after 6+ years, no constraints on financial investment, no constraints on talent investment, the whole "Apple is not first, but they do it best" thing, etc... that this is DOA. I can't see that at all... because I can't imagine Apple could get something that wrong.

Apple’s cut at this could have tremendous advantage over all attempts to date on the strength of the PPW benefit of A/M-series chips exclusive to Apple. I actually imagine tremendous potential for a device that is alleged to be able to fool our eyes into seeing alternative realities that look as real as reality... paired with existing devices that can cast the same effective illusion for our ears too. Completely fool 2 of the 5 senses and there is a WHOLE LOT of things that could be done with this product.

And that's not factoring in the whole AR side of things... which should be at least as great... if not more.

 

[East India Company]

Seems like this number might come down to 0 pretty soon..

 

[richinaus]

I am not sure why anybody thought this would be a consumer device, at $3000 with little to no content.

 

[Bodhitree]

It seems like a kinda low number for Apple, under 100,000 units. That’s about 300 million usd, it’s very small as a product category. If it was 7-10 million devices in the first year, it’d be the size of the iPad as a business, and they would overtake Meta’s Quest installed base in just a few years, which is important for the developers. But I think that would be wildly optimistic.

 

[rickbynight]

Now, I won't be buying this:

Because I'll use it a handful of times to play some stupid limited feature game that Apple comes out with to sell the device. After that, it will sit on a shelf and gather dust until it finds its way onto Ebay for far less than I paid for it...

We...don't actually know what Apple is going to release...

 

[mi7chy]

Even $1500 might be a hard sell but I'll hold judgement until seeing use cases for it.

 

[Speedy2]

This whole project is a catastrophe in slow motion.
A prime example of a sunk cost fallacy.

They should've killed it like the charging mat, but since Tim Cook just can't get over his ego and let go, we need to suffer through these silly rumors about this utterly pointless product, which then no one will buy.
He should admit it was simply too early and the technology for AR is still still years away from the mass market.

 

[macfacts]

Not sure what the business case is here. If this is aimed at developers, who are they developing for? Why would anyone build apps for this thing when consumer take-up is likely to be poor.

Devs should make an app store app

 

[DarthBuzzard]

I'm not sure why I would want this. If this is AR, it looks super unattractive. if it's VR, who wants that? VR flopped pre-COVID

This is about as accurate as saying PCs flopped when the Lisa was released. Turns out the PC market experienced upwards of 50000% sales growth between then and now.

 

[Richard700]

It all comes down to what it will do for consumers. If it has a feature that makes it worthwhile in my mind I'll buy it for 3k. But the only thing I could think of was NFL live action from multiple persectives, and with no Ticket and still primitive technology, I just don't see it in the next five to ten years.

Just give me something I want to buy. Never wore a watch until the Apple Watch which stores music for my running with wireless headphones and keeps track of the data. That made me buy and I love it.

I never thought I would want a smart phone until Apple made it - never thought I would want a tablet until they made one - never thought I would want an smart watch until they made one - Although, with the exception of the iPad, I did not get the first versions.

 

[svish]

With high pricing and shipping date towards the end of the year, don’t think Apple will be able to sell the headset in large numbers.

 

[Richard700]

Wow, revenues of "only" $300 million USD. What a failure!

I would be surprised if they haven't already spent at LEAST double that in R&D so far - plus add the the cost of producing the 100,000 units

 

[macfacts]

To everyone that's saying this is a day 1 purchase, you're probably better sign up for a dev account.

 

[krakenrelease]

So you’re saying I should buy one, leave it unopened and sell it to a rich idiot in 15 years?

Funny you say that, I was thinking of doing this lol

 

[laptech]

Developers will only buy the device if they see there is a market for it and there isn't because as others have already pointed out, VR headsets have been around for years and they have not taken off and those that have are used for gaming. As Apple does not have a gaming platform like others do, who is this device going to be marketed to?

It is the exact same principle with Apple gaming, gaming developers will not develop the majority of their hit pc/console games for mac machines because they do not see there being a market for it because of their not being enough mac users who would venture into hard core gaming like pc users do.

 

[Omega Mac]

Imagine this head set will have Optically Transparent LED or OTLED it would be a big surprise, a big reveal.

 

[karranz]

DOA. I don’t think Apple has a chance on making a revolutionary product, best case escenario is a niche product.

 

[E.Lizardo]

Same story everytime a new class of product is released by Apple.... Then after it sells like hotcakes these same "analysts" will be like "We knew it, Apple does it again, creates worlds best XYZ"

Sure they do.

 

[E.Lizardo]

This device sounds very 90s Apple if that makes sense, I guess the difference here is that they can afford this kind of product now.

That got me thinking. Using the inflation calculator, $3000 today would have been $1292.51 in 1990, and $1647.53 in 1999. Expensive even then for sure.

 

[panjandrum]

I would have expected sales to be *far* less than 100,000 units per year for the Apple Stereoscopic Simulation Hat. Top tier VR hardware remains very expensive and sells relatively poorly. I do expect it is going to look very good, and more importantly it might function easily and be comfortable to wear. Take a look at the (hopefully soon to ship) Pimax Crystal through-the-lens images. They look fantastic (FOV is too low, however). It's a far less expensive product, and while functional, not the kind of experience the ASSHat will probably provide (I expect a far more polished product from Apple, with even better visuals). I for one and definitely excited. Not in the market (I'll happily continue using my dual 4K Pimax 8K-X while I wait for the rest of the market to catch up on wide FOV HMDs), but definitely excited.

 

[E.Lizardo]

Apple is going to have to do a lot of selling and convincing for consumers to buy this product. There have been VR headsets for years now and they haven’t really caught on. Most have been built with gaming in mind, but that doesn’t really apply to Apple. Zuckerberg wants to sell them for his failed Metaverse, and that’s been a flop. Apple will have to have a really novel idea for these or else they’ll be a quick failure.

Very true. Though so many times Apple has ended up making a product that left me totally surprised when compared to the rumors. Now I always wait to see what they have made instead of trying to predict anything. No matter what it will be interesting!

 

[sviato]

Are there any rumors on the target audience of this device? If gaming, Apple would need serious partnerships with Microsoft for PC or console creators. If not for gaming, what else is this for? Media consumption would be a drag if everyone on the couch needed one of these.

 

[anthogag]

If the goggles look cool all will be good.

 

[The Game 161]

Lets face it the amount is due to how it will go more than anything. The first gen will be a look into the the future what it can do and will do going forward. as time goes it will come down in price. This is why I feel apple are going strong with this they see this as a start of the future before AR glasses come way down the line.