But with the iPhone, iPad, Mac and Watch, they also had an army of enthusiastic users who would show off these portable devices to all their friends and acquaintances. An ad hoc product demo given by someone you know is often worth more than thousands of dollars in traditional marketing.
With the Vision Pro, it’s not obvious that users can give demos so easily. There’s custom face fit, prescription lenses, and hygiene questions.
Their previous hit devices were famously “one size fits all” — the billionaire’s iPhone is the same as everyone else’s. The Watch has a bit of customization, but the Vision Pro takes it beyond fashion into a necessity.
When Apple introduced the iPhone, they had lines of people waiting to buy one without ever trying it. The same was true with the iPad.
Apple sold 10 million iPhones in the first year. But 10 million was such a small number, that the chance of you seeing one in the wild wasn’t that common.
Apple is already seeding journalist with demos and it’s getting enough buzz from people in YouTube who were invited to use one and people like John Gruber and Marco Arment that if even a small percentage of their listeners/readers try it not to mention natural foot traffic in popular Apple Stores that demand will outpace supply.
Meta has neither of those things and still managed to sell 15-20 million Quest units. If Apple is projecting less than a million units sold this year, they're going to have a hard time catching up to Meta's install-base, let alone their MAU count.
And Apple has single digit market share in computer sells and barely double digit in phone sales.
Are those two categories also failures for Apple?
And saying that Meta can sell more worse devices than Apple that are cheaper and losing Meta money is like saying that Android manufactures can sell more $50 unsubsidized phones than Apple.
People who are buying a $60 unsubsidized phone are not going to all the sudden be able to afford a $400+ iPhone. Apple has never in 40+ years catered toward the low end.
People who are priced out of an iPhone Pro are not going to take out a loan to pay for a headset they'll use like a game console. If they're not replacing their iPhone with it, there's no point in buying it. It's a product that inherently relies on an ecosystem (albeit a strong one) to survive. Much like the iPad and the Apple Watch, if the iPhone and it's app ecosystem didn't exist it would be DOA.
So... assuming you're right, who is this headset for? People inside the ecosystem, who want to spend more money on Apple products but don't need it for anything particularly useful? I wager more iPhone users will own Quest headsets than Apple-branded ones by 2025.
> People who are priced out of an iPhone Pro are not going to take out a loan to pay for a headset they'll use like a game console
Yet people take out 0% interest loans from Apple to buy $3000* laptops?
Besides, in most countries, people tend to pay cash for phones and carriers don’t offer payment plans.
> with it, there's no point in buying it. It's a product that inherently relies on an ecosystem (albeit a strong one) to survive
You mean like you can’t use an Apple Watch at all without an iPhone paired to it initially - not even the cellular Apple Watch and I doubt very many people are buying AirPods that don’t own Apple devices. The main value add over other BT headsets is the tight integration.
> Much like the iPad and the Apple Watch, if the iPhone and its app ecosystem didn't exist it would be DOA.
But the iPhone does exist and Apple’s services revenue from selling to existing users is larger than its revenue from the Mac and iPad revenue combined.
To a first approximation, no one buys Apple Watches for its third party app ecosystem. Most use it for notifications from the phone, for workouts using first party apps and for times when they don’t want to have their phones on them like running or other exercise
> I wager more iPhone users will own Quest headsets than Apple-branded ones by 2025.
And more iPod users and iPhone users own Windows PCs.
RIM and Palm sold 15-20 million units this year. If Apple is only projecting selling a million iPhones they're going to have a hard time catching up to Palm and RIM's install base.
That's not what I was saying. Palm and RIM assumed their unit sales were an unassailable moat. Both almost completely ignored the consumer phone market then dominated by feature phones. Apple didn't jump after raw market share but an underserved market.
I'm not saying the Vision Pro will follow the same path as the iPhone. Past sales of the competition shouldn't be used as a signal of how good compelling of a product it will be. Meta's sales reflect the demand of a product from Meta. Apple has a lot more experience and success at building a platform for third parties. Meta can improve the Oculus platform but it's an open question whether they will.
Yep. You left out the part where Palm ate Apple's lunch for 15 years, to the point that Apple was forced to abandon the Newton platform in order to compete. Spot-on recounting otherwise though.
>Apple was forced to abandon the Newton platform in order to compete.
They cancelled Newton in order to compete? I don't understand the assertion.
Newton was cancelled by Jobs in 1997 for a number of reasons, but mainly because Apple had lost focus and was running out of money. Jobs cleaned house and only kept the products that could bring in larger profits more quickly.
Palm pilots were sold as complementary products to Macs or PCs and synced well with either one. I don't understand how that is eating Apple's lunch for 15 years since Apple was not shipping a competing product. Does Boeing eat Apple's lunch since Apple doesn't sell any airplanes?
Apple released iPod in 2001, again, not a competitor to Palm but it did provide a means for Apple to learn how to build handheld devices in very high volumes. Ignoring the Motorola ROKR, when Apple finally entered the smartphone market in 2007, Palm began to wither away.
You've always got the weirdest anti-Apple position. Palm ate Apple's lunch? Palm spent ten years trying to overextend their platform, selling themselves to anyone that gave them the time of day, and going out of business. By 2007 Palm was a brand name on an out of date platform. The Pre was a few good ideas on a bad foundation and underpowered hardware.
The Newton platform was never competitive. The only group that forced the Newton to shut down was Apple. Then Apple didn't compete at all in the PDA space. Palm had a better PDA than Apple and Ford in 2000, because neither company competed in that space.
Meanwhile the iPhone sells more units in a year than Palm sold units in its lifetime.
Meta's unit sales are not an unassailable moat just like Palm's unit sales weren't a moat. Apple setting low initial projections is also not necessarily indicative of them not taking the market seriously or not having faith in the product.
Hopefully Meta learned the lessons of Palm, RIM, and the other smartphone also-rans and focuses on making their platform better. Apple's not unstoppable. There's also likely plenty of market for VR/AR at all price points. There's certainly room for that market to grow if the offerings are compelling.
