We’ve recognized concerning the Imaginative and prescient Professional for greater than half-a-year now (to not point out the years of rumors), however Apple’s first “spatial computing” system is one in every of shopper electronics’ largest query marks heading into the brand new 12 months. The $3,499 headset was given an “early-2024” launch time-frame when it was unveiled at WWDC in June, however since then, the corporate hasn’t gotten extra particular.
Apple oracle Ming-Chi Kuo supplied an early vacation reward on December 24, narrowing down what he believes can be a “late-January/early-February” launch date for the system. The analyst says that the primary wave of Imaginative and prescient Professionals are being shipped to Apple in a couple of month, with complete shipments numbering round 500,000 for the complete 12 months.
The corporate’s exact goal for the 12 months stays an open-ended query. A few month after the system was revealed, studies steered that Apple has scaled again expectations from round a million to “fewer than 400,000.”
Even the up to date 500,000 determine is small for an organization of Apple’s huge measurement and affect. Remember that the corporate ought to be transport greater than 200 million iPhones this calendar 12 months.
The Imaginative and prescient Professional, nonetheless, is broadly thought to be the largest gambit of Tim Prepare dinner’s 12-year tenure as CEO. Not solely is it a completely new class and type issue for the corporate, it’s additionally prohibitively priced, even for patrons accustomed to shelling out additional for apple merchandise. Add to that VR’s decades-long failure to dwell as much as expectations, and also you’ve acquired a giant uphill battle in your arms.
Kuo refers to Imaginative and prescient Professional as “Apple’s most necessary product of 2024.” Given the years of hypothesis and all of the money and time the corporate has little doubt poured into the headset, it’s a troublesome assertion to argue.
