Apple appears to be directing its efforts away from a second edition of its Vision Pro headset and toward a cheaper version, according to Mac Rumors, which cites reporting by The Information.
The Vision Pro’s retail price is $3,499. (The 14-inch MacBook Pro, by comparison, ranges in price from $1,599 to $3,199; the 16-inch sells for as much as $3,999.) Readers might recall the headset from our stories on the apps that Decathlon and StockX have designed for it. JD.com has now followed suit, introducing an immersive shopping app of its own just before the Vision Pro’s release in China on June 28 – this according to Retail Tech Innovation Hub.
The only word so far from Apple on the shift to a cheaper model appears to have been delivered to a component manufacturer in the company’s supply line, but work on the cheaper model – codenamed N109 and designed to sell for about $1,600 – began sometime in 2022. The plan was to have it pay off this year, but costs have kept a good prototype out of reach. Apple is reportedly striving to retain the high-end display, the most expensive part.
Whatever the mechanics of Apple’s decisions, the rationale appears to be poor sales. Here too, however, we have only rumor to go on.
9to5Mac spoke in February to a much-quoted analyst called Ming-Chi Kuo, who had visited a production line for the repair and refurbishment of Vision Pros and reported return rates of less than 1 percent. By Kuo’s account, estimates for US shipments were then running from 200–250k units for the year – better than Apple’s original estimates (150–200k units). His own estimate of units sold during the first pre-order weekend, published a month earlier on Medium, was for 160–180k units.
Business Insider and Mac Observer reported in late January and mid-February, respectively, that Apple had sold “more than” and “nearly” 200k. But by April, the outlook had changed.
Now it was Fast Company’s turn to cite Kuo, according to whose new survey Apple had cut Vision Pro shipments to 400–450k units, down from a market consensus of 700–800k. The company had made the cut before launching the Vision Pro in foreign markets, and Kuo took this as a sign of an unexpected drop in US demand. “Apple,” Kuo wrote, “is reviewing and adjusting its head-mounted display (HMD) product roadmap, so there may be no new Vision Pro model in 2025 (the previous expectation was that there would be a new model in 2H25/4Q25). Apple now expects Vision Pro shipments to decline YoY in 2025.”
