By Nikki, Chief Science Correspondent for Dailymail.Com
19:10 19 June 2024, updated 20:06 19 June 2024
Apple is known for churning out life-changing iPhones — but the tech giant seems to be falling behind when it comes to other products.
The Californian company has reportedly canceled work on its next-generation Vision Pro due to critics criticizing the current model.
The Vision Pro 2 was poised to be a higher-end headset, but is now on the back burner while Apple works on the cheaper Vision Pro.
The original $3,500 headset was heavily criticized earlier this year when unhappy customers rushed to return the Vision Pro, complaining that the small display hurt their eyes, it was uncomfortable and the features weren’t worth the high price.
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Apple initially had a sales target of three million Vision Pro headsets sold in the first year, but lowered that to 900,000.
That compares to more than 200 million iPhones sold annually.
According to The Information, Apple is looking to create a more affordable headset for both consumers and production efforts while keeping the same high-end components from the Vision Pro.
Codenamed N109, the cheaper headset will be “at least one-third lighter” and remove some features while retaining the high-resolution display.
Apple had intended to launch both the Vision Pro 2 and the N109, but ran into financial problems – and is now said to be scrapping the more expensive model.
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Apple said last year that it aimed to match the price of the N109 with the high-end iPhone, charging consumers between $1,500 and $2,500.
It will potentially be released in 2025 without several features, but Apple has yet to confirm which ones will be missing from the new VR device.
The company is reportedly working with Chinese company Seeya Technology to develop cheaper high-resolution displays.
But a person involved in its production told The Information that “Seeya has so far struggled to meet Apple’s standards, and the effort may fail.”
The initial hype around the launch of the Vision Pro in February saw pre-orders sell out in 18 minutes and more than 200,000 devices sold in just 10 days, but within weeks Apple saw average to above average returns.
Many early reviews of the Vision Pro concluded that it was ambitious but served little purpose.
One critic described it as “a high-tech solution in search of a problem”.
Another user wrote on X: ‘Apple Vision Pro is great for some things, but not a day has gone by that I’ve used it without it giving me eye strain and headaches.’
Apple has yet to release an app that takes full advantage of Vision Pro’s capabilities, instead focusing on how it can insert multiple screens and displays into your environment.
“You kind of find yourself in this virtual environment and ask yourself what are you doing here,” Randy Chia, a product manager at an investment firm in Los Angeles, told Bloomberg.
He said the Vision Pro software had the most bugs of any first-generation product he used, adding that the “wow factor” didn’t overcome the fact that “I’ve got this big thing on my head.”
Another person compared Meta’s lighter Quest headset to the Vision Pro, saying the latter was a worse alternative.
“That thing is too. [darn] heavy and everyone knows it and I’m used to carrying these things,” said a user of the outlet.
Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said the company cut its shipments by about half, dropping from 700 to 800 units to just 400 to 450 units, as the popularity of its Vision Pro waned.
“The challenge for the Vision Pro is to solve the lack of key applications, price and comfort of the headset without sacrificing a transparent user experience,” Kuo wrote in an April report.
“Apple is revising and adjusting its product roadmap for the head-mounted display, so there may not be a new Vision Pro model in 2025,” he continued.
“Apple is now expecting a drop in Vision Pro shipments [year-over-year] in 2025.”
DailyMail.com has reached out to Apple for comment.