Apple is some 72 hours away from its first major new product launch in eight years. The company is expected to show off a mixed-reality (XR) headset at next week’s WWDC developer event, which would mark its first new product introduction since the Apple Watch remade the smartwatch and wrist watch markets in 2015.
The company would be wading into a headset market that has failed to gain meaningful user traction, even as market leader Meta Platforms Inc. META, -0.37% changed its name in late 2021 to convey more of a focus on virtual worlds.
Mixed-reality headsets combine virtual reality, which is immersive, and augmented reality, which lets people engage virtually with real-life surroundings. Apple’s device, thought to be named Reality Pro, could emphasize immersive video, gaming and productivity applications, and feature hand- and eye-tracking technology so that users won’t need dedicated controllers, Bloomberg News reported earlier this year.
Expect Apple to take a different approach on pricing compared with Meta, which has multiple offerings and commanded nearly half of the market for augmented- and virtual-reality headsets in the first quarter, according to third-party data from IDC. While Meta has focused lately on making its devices more affordable to increase their mass-market appeal, Apple’s forthcoming headset could land with an eye-popping price tag of about $3,000.
MacDailyNews Take:
The original iPad was widely rumored to cost upwards of $1,000 at launch. Instead, it started just $499.
Apple seeded a much higher price into the rumor mill ahead of iPad in order to raise the bar and then delivered a “breakthrough price” at launch.https://t.co/58u9AORrNp
— MacDailyNews (@MacDailyNews) June 2, 2023
Accordingly, investors should expect paltry sales early on, with BofA Securities analyst Wamsi Mohan predicting that the company could sell perhaps 200,000 units of the device in 2023.
Still, he agreed that the category could become more of a hit for Apple down the line. “[I]t’s important to recognize that the headset version three years from now will be cheaper, faster and have many more use cases (gaming, entertainment, augmented productivity, fitness, wellness, education, training, healthcare, shopping, e-commerce, social media, etc.),” Mohan wrote, and those applications would all bring opportunities for Apple to rack up software revenue at high margins.
MacDailyNews Take: 72 hours.
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