Less than a year after its release, Apple's Vision Pro headset struggles to gain traction in the business market, facing resistance from companies wary of its high price tag.
The Vision Pro headset enables users to navigate virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) using gestures from eyes, hands and voice. It delivers an OLED, high-resolution visual experience. When it launched in February, analysts believed this mixed-reality device could help with VR/AR adoption in the enterprise and improve employee collaboration by creating more immersive environments, making the office less relevant.
But what held analysts back from giving Vision Pro a full-throttle endorsement when it was released is its approximately $3,500 entry-level price, a prediction that then played out in the market.
[Companies] have a hard time justifying the price tag of Vision Pro, especially when it comes to broad deployments.
Jitesh UbraniAnalyst, IDC
IDC expects that 1.9 million virtual reality and augmented reality headsets will be sold in the commercial market this year, which includes business, education and government. Still, of that total, only 349,000 are forecasted to be Vision Pro headsets -- a little less than 20%.
"The industry and Apple kind of expected more from the Vision Pro, but a lot of that did not materialize," said Jitesh Ubrani, an analyst at IDC. He added that he believes companies "have a hard time justifying the price tag of Vision Pro, especially when it comes to broad deployments."
Apple pitched the Vision Pro as a high-end tool for video conferencing, online meetings and collaboration, and said it would work seamlessly with a Mac. "You can do a lot of that on existing devices that are a lot cheaper, or on devices that don't necessarily require you to pair it with another PC," Ubrani said.
IDC is projecting that the demand for VR and AR headsets will increase by 23% in 2025.
Pricing and complexity
Josh Bersin, an independent HR industry analyst, said the headset cost was too much, especially given that companies buy hundreds to thousands of these devices.
"Employees break them, lose them and don't have time to tweak them," Bersin said. "The Apple product is not well suited for these high-volume, sometimes industrial or retail applications."
Analysts point to another high-end product, Microsoft's HoloLens, a mixed-reality device that costs $3,500 per device and is being discontinued. Microsoft said it is no longer producing its HoloLens 2, and that support for it will end Dec. 31, 2027.
J.P. Gownder, a Forrester Research analyst, said that many of the likely uses, such as in education or corporate training, "can be done quite effectively on a VR device from Meta that costs one-tenth the price."
There are unconfirmed reports that Apple is working on a less expensive version of the technology. However, even if Apple reduces the cost of its device, it will still compete with headsets such as Meta Quest, which retails for as little as $299. Apple didn't respond to TechTarget Editorial's questions about its plans.
"Apple could have looked at Microsoft's HoloLens to understand the challenge," Gownder said.
Apple assumed that a high-quality device would find an audience, Gownder said. "They were wrong about that because there is no market niche appropriate for the combination of price and features," he said.
Patrick Thibodeau is an editor at large for TechTarget Editorial who covers HCM and ERP technologies. He's worked for more than two decades as an enterprise IT reporter.
