Apple has already revealed its letters. The Vision Pro are the augmented reality glasses (or extended reality, depending on who you ask) that the Cupertino company had been working on for so long. The great device of the Tim Cook era. The leap towards spatial computing. The meticulous and prepared response in a field in which other companies such as Meta, Google (and its pioneers Glass) or Microsoft had already tried to enter with quite different levels of success.
Everything that can be said about the Apple Vision Pro has surely been said already, good or bad. His technical innovations. His initial commitment to combining productivity and relaxed leisure in the face of the metaverse space and the videogames of other competitors, his halo throughout Black Mirror, its battery with cable or how strange or not it will be seen to observe the gaze of a person through that front screen that recreates it
The question that cannot be resolved until the devices reach the market (something that is still missing) is whether will truly be the first to be considered a bestseller. If like the Nokia 3320 in the most primitive mobiles, the blackberry in the following, or the iPhone in smartphones will be a device that makes XR glasses become more or less common.
So far, that’s a long way from what happened with its predecessors.
The Apple Vision Pro enters a market of just over 20 million enthusiasts and pioneering companies
Leaving aside the helmets very focused on the gaming world, and focusing on those that until now had been born in the heat of the metaverse and augmented reality, the sales figures for these devices are very meager.
The Meta Quest 2 have been the most successful device of all of them, with some 15 million units sold., according to various reports. They are followed at a considerable distance by the Bytedance Pico, the company behind TikTok, and by far the Microsoft Hololens more focused on the world of work.
Apple’s forecasts regarding the Vision Pro move in the field of consultants, leaks and insiders who suddenly reveal having had access to exclusive documentation. If we stay with the fork resulting from all this information, It moves from 150,000 units to a million.
The following table is a comparative summary of all these devices and their estimated market share, based on sources such as IDC or Marketer:
Model | Sold units | % of Market | starting price |
Meta Quest 2 | 15 million | 90% | 450 |
Hololens (all models) | 300 thousand | 2 % | 3500 |
VisionPro | 150 thousand – 1 million (estimate) | 1-6% | 3499 |
Beak | 1 million | 7% | 429 |
Smartphone Sales 2007 | 122 |
A growing market, but where time is lacking
The same table shows the number of smartphones sold the year of the presentation of the first iPhone, and the Apple Vision Pro do not seem to arrive at the same time for their market.
The fact that the most successful devices in sales are those dedicated to leisure and with prices below 500 dollars, indicate that the purchase in the professional sector has not yet arrived.
Apple, whose Bloomberg says that he barely expects to receive 0.5% of his profits from the Vision Pro in the next few years, he seems to be in no hurry. But it has the support and the right users to start making this segment grow, first attacking a professional use and an enthusiastic public with money, and then gradually releasing models that are making their use more popular, something in which it would already be working.
Meta, the queen for now
Meta, in a certain way, has already made that transition and has presented its roadmap until 2030 with his virtual reality glasses, where his recent Quest 3 also drop below 500 dollars. They are two companies with enough power (to which Microsoft can be added) to drive the market alone.
The latest data is clear: The global market for virtual reality headsets grew 241.6% in the first quarter of 2023, and Meta owns 90% of the market with its Quest headset, according to IDC. It grows exponentially, but from a tiny position.
This is the playing field today: Meta dominates the sector, but for how long? Now all eyes (still without AR or VR glasses) are watching how the market responds to such a premium product, but which has an expectation that only Apple would be able to generate.