Vision Air project scrapped? Apple reportedly shifts focus to smart glasses, competing with Meta for the affordable market.
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Apple may make a major strategic adjustment to its ambitious Vision product line.
On October 12, well-known tech journalist Mark Gurman wrote in a Bloomberg column that, faced with the lackluster market performance of the $3,500 Vision Pro, Apple may shelve its more affordable headset project and instead focus its resources on developing a lighter, more mainstream smart glasses.
The lower-cost Vision Pro headset, speculated by outsiders to be "Vision Air," would be lighter and cheaper. However, Apple has already reassigned some engineers from this project to a team dedicated to developing smart glasses.
This shift not only exposes the difficulties faced by the $3,500 Vision Pro on the road to the mass market, but also signals that Apple will directly compete with rivals like Meta in the more promising smart glasses sector.
Strategic Shift: From "Niche" to "Mass Market"
Gurman believes that Apple’s DNA means it is not a company that chases niche markets. Its huge success is built on mainstream products like the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, each selling tens or even hundreds of millions of units.
However, the high price, heavy body, and lack of app ecosystem mean that Vision Pro remains an impressive but limited-use device, with its closed-off design limiting its potential as a tool for all-day wear by most people.
In contrast, the smart glasses form is considered to have more potential.
After experiencing Meta's new Ray-Ban Displays, Gurman believes that smart glasses naturally enable information viewing, taking calls, and hands-free photography—features more easily accepted by the public than bulky headsets.
He believes a finely optimized pair of Apple smart glasses has the potential to become as successful as the Apple Watch, and might even evolve into an iPhone replacement—a vision the Vision Pro could never achieve.
Therefore, he thinks Apple's decision to pause the development of the affordable headset and shift engineers to the smart glasses project is the "right decision."
Competitive Landscape: Meeting Meta Down the Same Path
Apple’s strategic shift also echoes moves by its industry rivals.
Meta has already shifted its focus from headsets to smart glasses. Samsung, though soon to launch a premium headset to rival Vision Pro, reportedly does not expect large sales from the product and is also collaborating with partners like Google on developing smart glasses.
Reportedly, Meta also hasn’t seen much success with mixed reality headsets that sell for far less than Vision Pro. This appears to indicate that if a concept cannot attract consumers even at a price point of $500 or below, the issue might lie with the product form itself, not merely the price.
The Future of the Vision Product Line
Gurman predicts that shelving the affordable headset doesn’t mean the end of the Vision Pro product line. In the future, the “Vision” series may evolve into a multi-tiered product portfolio:
- Low-end: Smart glasses with no display.
- Mid-range: Smart glasses with a display / true AR glasses.
- High-end: Flagship Vision Pro (will continue to be updated and iterated).
In addition, future smart glasses will likely continue to run the visionOS operating system, ensuring Apple’s investment in the software continues.
Apple has significant advantages in building smart glasses, including its design capabilities in wearables, efficient in-house chips, and strong ecosystem integration. However, the biggest challenge will be whether it can ultimately master AI-driven features, which are seen as the key to success for these devices.
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