If it were a Google product, this prediction would be a solid bet.
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
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Is this based on your experience using AVP? Or, you’re just guessing?
Based on every attempt to make VR or AR a ubiquitous thing, historically. The hype and the market do not align, but the R&D budgets are never bottomless while they wait for a market to materialize.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Boy to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass -- history is littered with tech failures in this space.
The most successful one so far, the Quest 2, was successful because of its low price. Apple went with the opposite strategy.
People have said the same kinds of things about lots of Apple products that end up dominating, or at least being a key player in those markets. The trick is don’t think about the current Apple Vision as the end-game. It’s what Apple is able to manage with current resources and getting it out to market helps them figure out what the subsequent steps are. I’ll bet that 5 years from now we’ll see something very different, and probably the product line being split in to consumer and professional targeted models.
Apple can afford and has the willingness to keep a product line going even if they don’t expect it to be really successful for a while.
Sure, but there are also lots of examples of Apple failing, and Apple doesn't have Jobs anymore to push those brand new segment products. I would never write them off immediately, but I just don't see their path to success here.
We said this about the iPad (is that some kind of tampon?!?!?) when they released it in 2010.
So I would predict that the Vision Pro concept will be alive and well 3 years from now.
The iPad is actually a fairly good example. People have predicted that a tablet form-factor would one day be a popular form factor. Sci Fi has had it for ages -- the Star Trek PADD, or similar. And there were other tablets out there doing reasonably well. If you include e-readers, tablets might even sell in a volume that would chart well against phones or laptops. The iPad annual sales are something like 50M, which is nothing to sneeze at.
If you look at the sum total of the VR headset market over time, you'd probably be lucky to be close to 50M units. https://www.neogaf.com/threads/the-current-list-of-best-selling-vr-headsets-of-all-time-thread-updated.1653893/
But very few VR users are regular users. They are a novelty purchase, like 3D televisions. Apple is late to the show here, and priced way too high.
But maybe I'm wrong. Which is sort of the point of this community :)