Recently, according to a report by TrendForce, the long-rumored Apple AR/VR headset may provide a monthly subscription service. Apple's first AR headset had been predicted at $1,000, $2,000 or $3,000. However, analysts at Trendforce are now speculating that it will require an additional monthly subscription to be able to use it.
In the report, TrendForce said strong shipments of Oculus and Microsoft products will likely force Apple to release related products this year, joining the competition. TrendForce also pointed out that the current market for AR headsets is dominated by Microsoft's HoloLens 2, considering hardware performance requirements and gross margins, Apple is likely to target the commercial market, and refer to HoloLens 2's pricing and charging strategy, hardware pricing is thousands of dollars, while software solutions take a subscription model and charge monthly.
Overall, TrendForce believes that the new product releases of Apple, Meta, and Sony this year may be delayed, and will not bring significant growth to the overall AR/VR market for the time being.
Apple is known to have been a champion of the subscription model, and because this model has successfully generated very stable revenue for Apple over the years, it is not surprising that they will launch a subscription model for their headsets. But it's unclear what subscription services Apple's AR/VR headset will offer, so we'll just have to wait and see.
In addition to this, Apple's AR/VR headset was confirmed to run the realityOS system, and since 2017, there have been rumors that Apple is developing realityOS, and now a reference to the operating system has been found in the App Store upload logs and Apple's open source code.