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Apple’s global developer conference begins Monday in Cupertino. That’s where the company is expected to unveil its Reality Pro, a virtual reality (VR) headset that costs about $3,000.
Many see VR glasses as the successor to the smartphone. Apple’s Reality Pro is reportedly aimed at productivity apps, offering features like VR FaceTime calling and immersive video. But Apple is mostly stepping into Mark Zuckerberg’s meta and Quest headset territory.
In the news. The , WWDC for short, is an annual conference for software developers organized by Apple. This year the conference is expected to focus primarily on hardware.
Apple enters meta territory
So Apple is entering meta territory. This company was responsible for the total of 8.8 million VR headsets sold last year with its Quest 2 and Quest Pro devices. The pandemic has been a boon for Mark Zuckerberg’s company. Hundreds of millions of people stayed at home; Video chat and digital entertainment thrived. The expectation for a next generation of hardware and software was that these experiences would get even better and take more time. But a lot has changed since 2021. As the world has reopened, enthusiasm for a range of digital experiences has waned. Experience Zoom stock. This served as a benchmark for investors’ belief in the productivity of the Internet. It peaked at $559 in October. Today, it’s still worth little more than 10 percent of that amount. Meta has relied entirely on VR headsets, but success is lacking for the time being. More than half of Quest headsets are not used after six months.
Cautious ambitions
Enlarge. Apple’s near-term ambitions for the Reality Pro are cautious. However, the company envisions a future where knowledge workers wear headsets all day.
Apple originally expected to sell about 3 million units a year. Since then, those estimates have been reduced to 900,000 units. (By comparison, the company sells more than 200 million iPhones a year.)
With ChatGPT, the focus is on
zoom out. Where does this lead? According to Apple specialist Mark Gurman, the company has a find for the device. What is meant by this is an experience sufficient to justify the high price and to drive everyday use.
In this context, it’s funny that ChatGPT managed to grab the world’s attention with a text box after investing billions of dollars in the VR and crypto hype. It will likely be another four years or more before any company makes a true VR-centric platform shift. However, Apple has time and usually manages to perfect the hardware. Apple didn’t produce the first PC, smartphone, or smartwatch. Nevertheless, the company managed to conquer large parts of the world market for all three of these products. So the process is far from over.
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