Apple Forced to Make Major Cuts to Vision Pro Production, Headset’s Complex Design Posing Problems: Report

Apple has been forced to make major cuts to production forecasts for its augmented-reality headset Vision Pro launched last month, the Financial Times reported on Monday, citing multiple people with direct knowledge of the manufacturing process.

Chinese contract manufacturer Luxshare, Apple’s only assembler of the device, was preparing to make fewer than 400,000 units of Vision Pro in 2024, the newspaper said citing two people close to Apple and Luxshare.

Apple and Luxshare did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The iPhone maker has asked two China-based suppliers for enough components for 130,000 to 150,000 units in the first year, FT reported, citing two China-based suppliers of some components for the Vision Pro.

Both projections imply a significant cut to production from an earlier internal sales target of 1 million units of the headset in the first 12 months, as per the report.

The complexity of the headset design and difficulties in production are behind the scaling back of targets, FT reported, and plans for a more affordable version of the device have been pushed back, it said.

The Vision Pro will start at $3,499 (roughly Rs. 2,86,293), more than three times the cost of the priciest headset in Meta’s line of mixed and virtual reality devices.

Last week, Apple’s market capitalization breached the $3 trillion (nearly Rs. 2,46,09,660 crore) mark for the first time since January last year, as investors bet on the iPhone maker’s ability to grow its revenue even as it explores new markets such as virtual reality.

Shares of Apple, which is also the world’s most valuable- listed company, were up 1.3 percent at $191.99 (nearly Rs. 15,750) in morning trading on Friday.

Apple’s market value briefly peaked above $3 trillion in intra-day trading on January 3, 2022, before closing the session just below that mark.

© Thomson Reuters 2023