Apple Vision Pro Has Halted Production – Here’s Why It Flopped

Apple’s Vision Pro mixed-reality goggles are reportedly no longer in production, but this is not exactly a surprise. 

Apple is undoubtedly one of the world’s largest tech giants and a company that has amassed a cult following of consumers ready and willing to hand their money over year after year for the next generation of iPhone. Because of this, it truly is no surprise that the company would want to get in on the virtual reality bandwagon. 

So, in February 2024, Apple released the Vision Pro, a pair of virtual reality goggles that “seamlessly blends digital content with your physical space.”  Basically, the tech allows the user to combine reality with the screens of their Apple products as they can expand movies and videos for complete immersion, open multiple apps at once to create a personalized VR workspace and capture moments with the device’s 3D camera. The main issue with this product, like most Apple products, is the price point.

The Apple Vision Pro sells for $3,500. This is an extremely steep price, but considering that Meta Quest sells quality VR tech for as little as $300, it’s not difficult to see why Vision Pro was not making decent sales. 

According to a news outlet called The Information, component manufacturers for the Vision Pro provided enough parts to produce over half a million VR headsets, yet “tens of thousands of undelivered parts” were filling up suppliers’ warehouses as of October 2024. Other sources at that time claimed that Apple had sold approximately 370,000 Vision Pros, which – if these numbers are correct – would make up less than two-thirds of the half million that were ready to be assembled. Due to the overfill of “undelivered parts,” it’s likely that production on Vision Pros has altogether halted.

Apple’s sales miscalculations don’t end there. It supposedly asked its Chinese manufacturer at the beginning of operations to anticipate making eight million Vision Pros. It’s an understatement to say that eight million sales for this product are unlikely at this point, and especially with halted production, they will probably never happen. 

Is it surprising to see an Apple product fail so dramatically? Taking into account the cost and purpose of the device: no, not exactly. Not only is the Vision Pro completely unaffordable for many consumers, the concept for this device simply doesn’t fit into the VR industry. Most people who buy VR headsets do so for their gaming capabilities, which is not at all what the Vision Pro was marketed or intended for. There simply is not enough demand for a product like the Vision Pro to make it a competitor in the VR industry at this time, but perhaps Apple has something up its sleeve for the future.