Apple Vision Pro stalls; struggles to attract buyers, developers in first year

Apple CEO Tim Cook
Apple’s Vision Pro spatial computer is struggling to attract customers and major software-makers to develop apps for the device, challenges that threaten to slow the progress of the company’s most highly touted new product in a decade.
Aaron Tilley for The Wall Street Journal:
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New apps released on the Vision Pro every month have slowed since its launch in January. Some of the most successful virtual-reality software developers have so far opted not to build apps for the headset.
Without enough killer apps, certain users have found the device less useful and are opting to sell it.
Apple launched the Vision Pro with an experimental strategy: Sell a premium version of the goggles for $3,499 before they had broad consumer appeal, betting the Vision Pro would kick-start an industry still in its infancy. To catch on, the Vision Pro would need killer apps, which helped turn the iPhone into one of the most popular consumer products in history.
So far, the ecosystem for the headset has developed slowly, as many developers remain on the sidelines… There has been a significant slowdown in new apps coming to the Vision Pro every month. Only 10 apps were introduced to the Vision App Store in September, down from the hundreds released in the first two months of the device’s launch, according to analytics firm Appfigures…
Apple hasn’t disclosed any sales figures for the Vision Pro, but analysts say the headset hasn’t sold well. Apple cut its first year Vision Pro shipments to between 400,000 and 450,000, down from between 700,000 and 800,000 units, according to supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo in April.
In the second quarter this year, Vision Pro sales plunged 80% from the first quarter, according to Counterpoint Research. A large chunk of initial buyers also returned the device within the two-week window that Apple allows for a full refund, the research firm said.

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MacDailyNews Take: None of this is the least bit shocking to anyone who’s been paying attention (and/or reading MacDailyNews Takes).
[This] is exactly what you’d expect to occur when a product is released too early to average users… Apple Vision Pro is a devkit for developers, not for average users, and should have been released as a devkit for developers. – MacDailyNews, March 26, 2024
As we wrote on March 22nd:

There are a lot of people inside and outside of Apple who think the company should have waited on the Vision Pro, but it’s fairly easy today to see why Tim Cook released this beta (alpha?) devkit: He likely knew last year, or had a strong inkling, that Project Titan [“Apple Car”] was a goner and there wasn’t much excitement in Apple’s pipeline. He’d need something to point to as “innovation” while he continued on his seemingly unending quest to iterate and monetize products invented by Steve Jobs’ Apple (a very different place) while continuing Apple’s retail store buildout. He also needed something to energize developers and, who knows, they might come up with a killer visionOS app while Apple toils on the long road to real lightweight spatial computing glasses and beyond.
More importantly, Apple last year had already come to the sad realization that they’d missed the generative artificial intelligence revolution and would need a distraction while they feverishly scrambled to catch up…
You have to feel for Cook. After a decade plus of being able to iterate and monetize Jobs’ inspired products and services and continue adding retail stores around the world to spectacular effect, and being lauded for it, he now finds himself in a place that requires actual vision to be able to see which path to take. And he’s not the guy. Even the guy who put him in the position knew it.
Tim’s not a product person, per se. – Steve Jobs
See also:
• Contrary to popular belief, Steve Jobs knew about Apple Watch – February 13, 2023
• Work on Apple Vision Pro began under Steve Jobs – August 23, 2023
Beyond the fact that Cook can’t even execute a compelling live keynote address, his big send off, the “Apple Car,” [the idea of which was also germinated under Jobs] fizzled in ignominious failure.
See also:
• Scrapped Apple Car ‘a massive disappointment that will alter the course of the company’s history, perhaps for decades to come’ – Gurman – March 11, 2024
• Apple employees referred to doomed Apple Car project as ‘The Titanic Disaster’ – February 29, 2024
So, despite myriad misgivings and protestations inside Apple, Cook pulled the trigger early on the Vision Pro. He had to have something to point to that would buy him some time. Even Apple’s rubber-stamping board of lackeys would wake up and start asking questions otherwise.
While Cook is hemming and hawing when faced with shareholders (virtually, of course, never again in person for as long as Cook remains), Apple is currently in scramble mode trying to catch up to rivals — including the world’s most valuable company, Microsoft — in generative AI, a technology the company seems to have completely missed while focusing instead on the not-ready-for-primetime Apple Vision Pro, visionOS, its now-canceled decade-long multi-billion-dollar electric vehicle boondoggle, replacing leather in iPhone cases and Apple Watch bands with overpriced junk in a quest to “save the planet,” forcing employees to endure a constant barrage of time-wasting zero-productivity DEI sessions, and myriad other various and sundry “initiatives” which Cook deems of import. – MacDailyNews, February 28, 2024
When you lose your visionary CEO and replace him with a caretaker CEO, this is the type of aimless, late, bureaucratic dithering that ensues. – MacDailyNews, November 21, 2017
Until it gets another visionary leader (fingers crossed; Apple’s history has shown – cough, Sculley, Spindler, cough – that the next CEO could be far, far worse than the very competent caretaker Cook), Apple can afford to miss things like generative AI – which they clearly did – and then use its huge war chest to catch up – which they’re doing right now (fun times and 80-hour weeks inside Apple Park!) – and, hopefully, surpass rivals (or at least be as good). Apple will very likely unveil their catch-up work within months (this June at WWDC 2024) in iPhones (and iPads, Apple Watches, etc.) with built-in on-device generative AI and other new AI-driven features. – MacDailyNews, February 14, 2024

MacDailyNews Note: Today is Columbus Day in the U.S. and, as we spend the day with family and friends, posting will be limited. We will return to our regular posting schedule tomorrow.

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The post Apple Vision Pro stalls; struggles to attract buyers, developers in first year appeared first on MacDailyNews.