Apple undoubtedly faces a tough time trying to convince people to spend three and a half thousand dollars on a its upcoming headset. To ensure potential buyers...
Apple hopes to convince people to buy its $3,500 Vision Pro headset using free 25-minute in-store demos::undefined
They need to build hype, and if that means they are pushing a demo on walk-ins,then I don’t have an issue with it as long as they accept a “No thank you” from the customer.
Did they say this or is this your pet theory? I don’t feel like that is necessarily the best strategy, since people won’t develop for it, when there’s no users and no users will appear when no one develops an ecosystem for this thing…
This isn’t really a “pet” theory — just economics. VR represents an entirely new product line, and with Apple’s expansion into services, a whole new way to value-add to those services and entire ecosystem; capturing more recurring revenue. This price point is based on new manufacturing costs at a much smaller scale than their other product lines.
It’s Apple, so it’ll never be “cheap”, but it can’t remain at this price point and stave off competition for long. Within 3 years they’ll either drop the price and introduce a pro version, or release an SE version, that’ll still probably be around $2000-2500 — but bringing it within reach of the people who’d normally buy “pro” devices.
This is interesting because you’re correct that this is almost certainly a dev kit that they’re making people pay for.
However: this is very unlike Apple to do if it’s true. We ask ourselves, “What is the enthusiast or middle class user able to afford for good VR?” And as we’ve seen, consumer headsets are aimed at less than $1000.
So the plan is for Apple to put out an amazing headset with the best materials and best screen and eye tracking and all this, only for them to wait some years before releasing a worse version of this that still costs over $1000? I can’t see how Apple would get beneath this price point. And I can’t see how they’d justify themselves.
So your average consumer isn’t using this anytime soon. Did they just make a weird toy line for the rich?
You have to start somewhere. The iPhone was a game changer so it took of instantly. Something like an AR/VR headset is still pretty niche even today about 10 years after VR really became a thing.
It is not meant for the end consumer at this stage, it is a tech demo and development kit.
The real consumer variant will probably be released in a year or two.
It should be marketed as a dev kit, but they’re marketing it for consumers
Well, why not capture some consumers at the same time?
This very article says that Apple is pushing it onto “walk-in” consumers.
So?
They need to build hype, and if that means they are pushing a demo on walk-ins,then I don’t have an issue with it as long as they accept a “No thank you” from the customer.
Did they say this or is this your pet theory? I don’t feel like that is necessarily the best strategy, since people won’t develop for it, when there’s no users and no users will appear when no one develops an ecosystem for this thing…
This isn’t really a “pet” theory — just economics. VR represents an entirely new product line, and with Apple’s expansion into services, a whole new way to value-add to those services and entire ecosystem; capturing more recurring revenue. This price point is based on new manufacturing costs at a much smaller scale than their other product lines.
It’s Apple, so it’ll never be “cheap”, but it can’t remain at this price point and stave off competition for long. Within 3 years they’ll either drop the price and introduce a pro version, or release an SE version, that’ll still probably be around $2000-2500 — but bringing it within reach of the people who’d normally buy “pro” devices.
This is interesting because you’re correct that this is almost certainly a dev kit that they’re making people pay for.
However: this is very unlike Apple to do if it’s true. We ask ourselves, “What is the enthusiast or middle class user able to afford for good VR?” And as we’ve seen, consumer headsets are aimed at less than $1000.
So the plan is for Apple to put out an amazing headset with the best materials and best screen and eye tracking and all this, only for them to wait some years before releasing a worse version of this that still costs over $1000? I can’t see how Apple would get beneath this price point. And I can’t see how they’d justify themselves.
So your average consumer isn’t using this anytime soon. Did they just make a weird toy line for the rich?
At best this may help scaling up production of the necessary components (in particular the displays)
Well it is Apple, they sell status more than anything else.
You have to start somewhere. The iPhone was a game changer so it took of instantly. Something like an AR/VR headset is still pretty niche even today about 10 years after VR really became a thing.