Remember the Apple Vision Pro that everyone was talking about when it launched back in February? Think really hard. Of course, while Apple’s $3,500 AR/VR headset – which the company likes to call a “spatial computing device” – isn’t exactly weighing down Santa’s sleigh this year, it hasn’t exactly bombed considering that Apple only expected to sell 500,000 units in the first year. Right now, Counterpoint Research projects that Apple sold 370,000 units in the first three quarters of 2024 and will sell another 50,000 or so in Q4. That falls short of its original projection, but not embarrassingly short. And Apple is already planning a cheaper model. None of this means that AR/VR is anything but a niche product at this point, suggesting that media companies need not kill themselves developing specialized AR/VR content. That is, unless you’re a forward-
looking company like Disney, which has already forged a close relationship with Apple on the Vision Pro. Or perhaps a famously innovative filmmaker like James Cameron, whose Lightstorm Vision venture this week announced a multi-year partnership with Meta to develop 3D content for the Meta Quest VR headset. In a Meta blog post, Cameron said he “was amazed by its transformational potential and power” and called this moment “a true, historic inflection point.”
But is it? Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged diverting much of the company’s R&D away from the once-central “metaverse” to prioritize artificial intelligence. And Apple CEO Tim Cook called the Vision Pro an “early adopter product” in a Wired interview out this week (he told The Wall Street Journal the same thing back in October). And yet both companies continue to work on making AR/VR more accessible to consumers, whether it’s Cook’s push for a cheaper Vision Pro or Zuckerberg’s efforts around its Orion AR glasses prototype previewed in September but possibly years from product launch. Both are thinking quite far ahead as Silicon Valley often does – but the question is whether media companies have the bandwidth to pay any attention as they work through massive industry disruption affecting linear, theatrical, and streaming. The good news is that these products are still in their nascent stages. They may never take off with consumers. But they also may be one seamless form factor or killer app away from suddenly reaching iPhone-like status. Just this week, AppleInsider reported that Apple has obtained a new patent for a Vision Pro sensor microphone that measures nasal breathing. What the heck is that for? Who knows, but can you smell what the Tech is cooking?
Next? It’s dangerous to write off new technologies that don’t immediately take off with consumers. Yes, the iPod and iPhone were immediate hits that quickly changed everything. But that’s not always how tech develops. Sometimes it gradually worms its way into the zeitgeist. Take humanoid robots and autonomous vehicles under development by Tesla and countless other companies (many of them in China). Most remain prototypes and may initially be too expensive for mass-market adoption, but people like Elon Musk have a long time horizon and plenty of cushion to burn through billions in R&D. Imagine a Vision Pro or Quest that allows access to AI-fueled content discovery on the go, within a form factor indistinguishable from regular sunglasses. Alphabet (then Google) abandoned its Borg-like Google Glass AR project in 2015 but has since launched Project Iris, a secretive AR initiative with AI-fueled prototypes under development. No one has given up on AR/VR despite the long timeline of fits and starts. And, in fact, Silicon Valley’s R&D shift to AI may actually solve some of the functionality issues that possibly held AR/VR back in the past. This doesn’t mean media companies, streamers, and studios should drop more pressing matters to launch AR/VR initiatives. But they should pay close attention, just in case the world suddenly changes overnight. It has happened before. It could happen again.
