The news of Vision Pro’s production cut follows Apple becoming the first publicly traded company whose market valuation closed above $3 trillion on Friday.
American tech major Apple has reportedly been “forced” to scale back the production plans of its latest mixed reality headset – Vision Pro. A report by the Financial Times, citing unnamed sources, attributed the complexity of the MR headset design and difficulties in its production as reasons behind the “drastic cuts” to its development plans.
Apple and Chinese contract manufacturer Luxshare, the iPhone maker’s only assembler of the device, was reportedly preparing to make fewer than 400,000 units last year. Separately, the Tim Cook-led company has reportedly asked two China-based sole suppliers for enough components of Vision Pro for 130,000 to 150,000 units in the first year. Both forecasts imply a significant cut to production from an earlier internal sales target of one million units of Vision Pro in the first 12 months, FT reported.
Meanwhile, the scaling back of production plans has disappointed Luxshare. The Chinese assembler of Vision Pro “has been gearing up its capacity to be able to build nearly 18mn units annually in the coming years,” FT reported.
The American tech giant unveiled its first-ever mixed reality headset Apple Vision Pro at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 5. The much-awaited headset, which is priced at a whopping $3,499, is also Apple’s first major new product category in nearly a decade. The Tim Cook-led company’s latest headset is more than double the launch price of $1,500 of Meta’s Quest Pro mixed reality headset, which has since dropped to nearly $999.99.
The news of production cuts of Vision Pro comes at the heel of Apple becoming the first publicly traded company whose market valuation closed above $3 trillion on Friday, the first time since early 2022. Shares of the Cupertino-headquartered company have jumped nearly 46% this year, TechCrunch reported; adding that the iPhone maker’s stronger-than-expected quarterly earnings in May reinforced its reputation among investors. Although Apple’s milestone valuation follows the launch of Vision Pro, according to a report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the $ 3 trillion valuation is not driven by Apple Vision Pro but reflects the company’s “ever-expanding ecosystem.”
Elsewhere, Gurman had previously reported that Apple is reportedly working on a cheaper and more affordable model of Vision Pro that could be released as early as the end of 2025. The company could reduce the cost of the headset by lowering screen quality, using fewer cameras for lesser performance, and powering the device either by an iPhone-grade chip or an older Mac chip instead of the dual Apple silicon chip design.
