Image source: Visual China
More than 7 months after its release, the Apple Vision Pro arrived as scheduled.
On January 19, local time, Apple's first mixed reality headset Apple Vision Pro officially opened pre-orders in the U.S. market, with a starting price of $3,499 (about 25,000 yuan) and three storage capacities of 256GB-1TB to choose from.
As one of the most concerned new products in the technology industry this year, the high price has not stopped consumers' enthusiasm. It is reported that the Vision Pro's server was down within 5 minutes of the opening of pre-orders on Apple's U.S. website, and due to the lack of initial stock, the inventory was declared sold out after 18 minutes of the order.
This is a rare piece of good news for Apple, which encountered multiple headwinds at the beginning of the year and lost the throne of "the world's largest market capitalization company".
After 7 years of polishing, on June 6, 2023, Vision Pro was officially unveiled at WWDC 2023. Apple CEO Tim Cook said, "The era of spatial computing has arrived. And called the Vision Pro "the most advanced consumer electronic device ever." This is also Apple's first new product line since the launch of the Apple Watch in 2014.
At that time, the market had a lackluster response to this new product, which Apple had high hopes for. In the global consumer electronics downturn, in addition to the high price, the mixed user experience and the imperfect ecology may discourage ordinary consumers from Apple's original headset. What's more, Apple looks like it's just caught the last train of the metaverse ebb tide, which is why Wall Street, which is betting heavily on AI, is turning to the Microsoft camp.
After more than half a year from release to sale, why are consumers now responding beyond expectations?
Cook has said that devices like the Vision Pro will replace the iPhone in the next decade. The lack of breakthroughs in feature upgrades and sluggish sales growth have made Apple's task of finding the "next iPhone" even more urgent, and the Vision Pro has carried this task, but at the moment, it cannot be equated with an easily accessible consumer electronics like the iPhone.
At present, the most direct effect of Vision Pro on Apple is to satisfy consumers' curiosity about new products that have been lost for a long time, and use innovative business cards to refresh the impression of "changing the soup without changing the medicine", and get out of the haze brought by the expectation of sluggish demand.
Just like the iPhone Pro and iPhone Pro Max, the positioning of "Pro" is also crucial to detonating users' enthusiasm. The controversial price may not be a concern for Vision Pro's target users. In addition to the addition of novelty and fan loyalty, the product is expected to become a "luxury" in Apple's product pedigree, with its own social attributes. While cutting down on pricing can help boost sales, it can also end up being mediocre with other similar products.
Tianfeng International analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said on January 12 that Apple's Vision Pro will be stocked initially of about 6-80,000 units, and because the number of stocks is not large, it will be out of stock in the early stage of listing. Although the initial low inventory may be limited by production capacity and the mentality of testing the waters, the hunger marketing effect of "waiting" is also Apple's usual strategy.
Cook visited China last October. In addition to supporting the iPhone 15 series, which was just launched in September, this is also a trip that is highly related to the Vision Pro. On the third day of his trip to China, Cook visited Luxshare Precision's factory in Jiashan, Zhejiang. It is reported that Cook looked at the relevant production line of the Vision Pro to ensure that the production was foolproof.
Apple, which has dispersed its industrial chain globally in the past few years, is re-embracing the mature Chinese mainland supply chain in order to fight the first battle of MR products. According to media reports, unlike the low proportion of mainland parts of the iPhone 15 series, the proportion of Apple's Vision Pro Chinese mainland supply chain has been greatly increased to about 60%.
During this trip, Cook said in an interview with the media, "I have very high expectations for the development of Vision Pro by Chinese developers. We already have a group of developers working on Vision Pro in Shanghai. We've seen some apps that are sure to be a hit. Chinese developers will repeat their global success stories in the AR era. ”
In the future, the key to whether Vision Pro can get rid of the fate of short-lived geek toys lies in ecology.
On January 16, local time, Apple announced the official launch of the Vision Pro app store. According to reports, the visionOS app store will provide both apps designed for Vision Pro features, as well as iOS apps that can run in 2D mode on the device.
Similar to Apple's highly profitable cash cow App Store, the Vision Pro App Store not only connects 2D and 3D to build a broader ecosystem, but also provides a new revenue portal.
According to Bloomberg, when asked how people can use the Vision Pro in a more "cool" way, Apple executive Mike Rockwell listed healthcare, training and education as key areas. Although Apple has acquired content from many large entertainment providers, including The Walt Disney Company, streaming giants Netflix, YouTube, Spotify are still not planning to embrace the Vision Pro at this time. Viewing content only through the device's web browser may also dissuade some users who are willing to pay for entertainment.
On January 22, Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at Tianfeng International, pointed out that the pre-order of Vision Pro seems to be positive, but there is a key concern: 48 hours after the pre-order is opened, the shipment time remains unchanged, which means that after the core fans and heavy users actively place orders in the open pre-order of Vision Pro, the demand may decline rapidly;
Before Apple proves more imagination to users with the Vision Pro, it still needs to overcome the dilemma of extreme hardware and weak ecology. After the official launch, whether it can achieve self-propagation among users and promote a positive cycle of growth is also the most important suspense for Apple at the moment. (Fortune Chinese Network)
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