The Apple Vision Pro arrived in Australia in July with a hefty retail price tag starting from A$5,999. Like many of the other markets where it has launched, here too it has largely failed miserably to attract consumer attention.
The Vision Pro is struggling to attract major software-makers to develop apps for the device. There has been a progressive slowdown in new apps coming to the Vision Pro each 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.
Appfigures has counted around 1,770 apps available for the Vision Pro in the App Store as of September. Only 34 per cent of those apps are believed to be built specifically for the Vision Pro, while the rest are versions of existing Apple apps that have additional Vision Pro functionality.
Apple, meanwhile, said in August that there are more than 2,500 apps built for the Vision Pro.
For comparison, other Apple products had tens of thousands of apps built for them within months of their launch. Nearly a year after the 2008 launch of the App Store for the iPhone, Apple said it had 50,000 apps. The Apple Watch, meanwhile, had 10,000 apps around five months after its debut.
The company doesn’t disclosed sales figures for the Vision Pro, but analysts have shared some insights. 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, reported the Wall Street Journal.
In the second quarter this year, Vision Pro sales plunged 80 per cent from the first quarter, according to Counterpoint Research.
Also, a large number of initial buyers reportedly returned the device within the two-week window that Apple allows for a full refund, found the research firm.
While Apple is floundering with its headset, Meta seems to have found a rhythm with its AR/VR gear. Last month, it announced the Quest 3S headset – now available in Australia at a starting price of A$499.99 – which is thousands of dollars less than Apple’s offering.
Recently, as ChannelNews reported, Meta also showed off its AR glasses prototype Orion that weighs less than 100 grams, has a wide field of view, and sharp holographic displays. The display doesn’t use passthrough — what the wearer sees is the real physical world with holograms overlaid onto it.
