©Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Apple’s Vision Pro headphones are displayed on the day they go on sale for the first time in Los Angeles, California, U.S., February 2, 2024. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo
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By Stephen Nellis and Dawn Chmielewski
(Reuters) – Apple’s (NASDAQ:) Vision Pro could revolutionize the way people watch television at home and the way they use computers at work, potentially positioning headphones as a successor to both traditional television and the Mac.
The $3,500 headset, which combines three-dimensional digital content with a view of the outside world, arrived in the company’s physical stores in the United States on Friday. It enters a market crowded with low-cost rivals like Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:), HTC and others that have remained mostly confined to the video game market and have failed to find a mass audience.
But Apple’s expensive device features custom computer chips and difficult-to-produce displays that rivals lack. Analysts who have tested the headphones say these features could make the device a threat to almost any large two-dimensional screen at home or work.
Walt Disney (NYSE:) has been quietly working with Apple for years on an app to launch Vision Pro, the latest in a history of collaboration between the two companies.
“When we saw it, it became clear that this was a new canvas for how to tell stories in a way that hadn’t been done before,” said Aaron LaBerge, chief technology officer at Disney Entertainment. “And so it became pretty obvious that we wanted to do something here just as a way to stretch ourselves.”
The Disney+ app immerses movie viewers in one of four environments, so they can watch “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” from the seat of a fictional X-34 landspeeder on the planet Tatooine, like a futuristic drive-in theater, or watch ” Avengers: Endgame” from inside Avengers Tower in midtown Manhattan. Viewers can also watch 42 Disney films in 3D, including box office hits “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “Black Panther” and “Inside Out.”
Jamie Voris, chief technology officer at Walt Disney Studios, said filmmakers such as “The Lion King” director Jon Favreau and “Avatar” James Cameron are interested in telling stories in new ways. Disney created an experience that it teased in a clip screened at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference last June, in which consumers interacted with its Marvel Studios animated anthology series, “What If?”
The device also opens up new ways to experience live sporting events or theme park rides, Voris said.
“It really represents what we do best, which is bringing our characters and our stories into the real world and bringing you closer to the people you care about,” Voris said.
It’s unclear whether a mixed reality device was what the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had in mind when he confided to biographer Walter Isaacson that, in developing a next-generation television, “I’ve finally done it.” But to analysts like Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies, Vision Pro seemed to have delivered on that long-ago promise.
“I don’t know if this is what Jobs meant when he said ‘I broke the TV,’” Bajarin said. “But the platform element is what makes it more interesting than if they launched a TV. It can be productivity. It can be social… It could become a much bigger deal and a much bigger opportunity than if it were just a TV. “
To be sure, the expensive Vision Pro won’t be a quick best-seller. In a note to investors, Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi said that Apple has told its supply chain to expect to build only 1 million units – and even this could be that Apple is preparing excess capacity ahead of demand of consumers.
Apple’s approach “suggests a lack of confidence that consumers will feel compelled to purchase immediately without needing to be convinced by in-store demonstrations,” Sacconaghi wrote.
But the high price represents less of an obstacle for corporate buyers.
Jay Wright, CEO of Campfire, a startup that makes software for using headsets to collaborate remotely on three-dimensional files such as engine designs, noted that the original Mac computer in 1984 cost the equivalent of nearly $7,500 today . But small businesses have turned to the Mac for its ability to create and print documents and brochures.
“It’s important to recognize that this is not a consumer accessory device, like the Apple Watch. This is a completely new computing platform,” Wright said. “I’m of the opinion that this is more like what’s coming after the Mac than what’s coming after the iPhone.”