Is Apple waving the white flag?

The recent news about its mixed reality headset — the Vision Pro — might have some investors wondering. 

A little more than a year after Apple launched the product (to mixed fanfare) tech news site The Information reported:

In recent weeks, Apple has told Luxshare, which is responsible for the Vision Pro’s final assembly, that it might need to wind down its manufacturing in November, according to an employee at the Chinese manufacturer. Luxshare is making around 1,000 Vision Pro units a day, down from a peak of around 2,000 units a day, the employee said.

Source: The Information

There is, of course, a reason for this. Nobody wants to spend $3,500 for a device that doesn’t run what you want it to. According to the WSJ:

There has been a significant slowdown in new apps coming to the Vision Pro every month. Only 10 apps were introduced to the Vision App Store in September, down from the hundreds released in the first two months of the device’s launch, according to analytics firm Appfigures.

As of August, Apple said it had 2,500 apps developed for the headset. If that sounds like a lot, consider the Apple Watch had some 10,000 apps less than six months after its launch. And the iPhone had 50,000 apps developed for it in the year following its release. 

And as far as the competition goes, Meta is quietly dominating in the headset market…

The social-media company is a formidable competitor to Apple, with a market share of all headsets reaching 74% in the second quarter this year, according to Counterpoint Research.

So is this a misstep for the mighty Apple?

Don’t Sell Your Shares Just Yet…

Apple has a knack for finding its place in the market. Consider its last big release…  The Apple Watch.

Digital watches aren’t exactly a new thing. In fact, they’ve been around since the 1970s. For those of you old enough to remember, we give you the Hamilton Pulsar P1 Limited Edition…

(BTW, that baby cost $2,100 in 1972 — that’s nearly $16,000 today!)

This breakthrough was followed by calculator watches, game watches, camara watches, even TV watches.

By the time Apple rolled out their watch in 2015, high tech timepieces had largely become passé. Instead, everyone was doing everything on their personal devices (i.e. their phones) including checking the time. Who on earth would need an Apple Watch?

Despite that looming reality, Apple was undeterred. They put out the slickest product they could — an all new interface with all kinds of apps for all kinds of (silly) purposes (like showing you where all the planets in the solar system were at any given moment).

But a few years later, the health and fitness market started taking off.  And the Apple Watch became the perfect wearable for it. 

Today, despite the growing competition in the wearables market, Apple has become the dominant player. During the first three quarters of 2023, the company sold 26.7 million units which gave them a 30% share of the global smartwatch market. (Industry leader by a mile.) 

So at the risk of sounding like Apple fanboys, while the news from Apple is disappointing at the moment, the Vision Pro game is far from over…