Sales are cold, and Apple's headset is going to follow the old path of ByteDance's pico?

Tencent News Deep Web

2024-06-28 16:29The official account of Tencent News's "Deep Web" column

Image source: Visual China  

Author丨Enron 

Editor丨Xue Fang

Produced by丨Deep Web Tencent News Xiaoman Studio

On June 28, the Apple Vision Pro national version was officially released. Unlike the American version of the Vision Pro, when the American version of the Vision Pro was released, Apple stores in the United States were crowded.

At 10:00 a.m. on the same day, Apple's official website showed that the "scheduled demo" of Chaoyang Joy City, Sanlitun, Huamao Shopping Center, Wangfujing, and Xidan Joy City Apple stores had been full for nearly a week. However, when the author visited the store, he found that only one user was trying it out in the Chaoyang Joy City store, and three Vision Pros were vacant.

The author asked if it was possible to try the Vision Pro directly when it was vacant, and the store clerk told him, "Due to the limited number of experts in charge of reception in the store, users must make an appointment first. If a user fails to make an appointment, the online reservation quota will be released. ”

At more than 10:00 a.m., only one user tried out the 4 Chinese version of Vision Pro in the store, and each user tried it for 30 minutes

There are many appointments for demos, but few real pick-ups

According to the author's visit, there are many users who make an appointment for a demo in the Apple store, but there are very few C-end users who are really willing to spend more than 30,000 yuan to buy a national version of Vision Pro. The slots of users who have experienced Vision Pro are concentrated in "large size, high price, lack of application, and easy dizziness".   

In terms of price, there are three versions of the Chinese version of Vision Pro, 256G, 512GB, and 1TB versions are priced at 29999 yuan, 31499 yuan, and 32999 yuan respectively. Myopia users also need to choose Zeiss optical inserts (799 yuan for the old prescription and 1199 yuan for the new prescription), plus 3999 yuan for Apple Care+ (2-year warranty) service, and domestic users need to spend about 35,000 yuan to buy a 256G version of the Chinese version of the Vision Pro.

Compared with the starting price of the Chinese version of Vision Pro 29999 yuan, the price of the American version of Vision Pro has dropped to about 25000 yuan, and the price of the American version of Vision Pro of 256GB in the early stage has even fallen to 22999 yuan.

A merchant revealed, "There is no difference in hardware between the Chinese version and the American version of Vision Pro, and after the national bank is launched, you can download and use the domestic APP by switching the domestic ID." Recently, there has been an increase in the number of users who have purchased the US version of the Vision Pro. ”

However, some people familiar with the matter told "AI Lightyear" that the American version of Vision Pro sold in some domestic channels may be a smuggled version (without declaring tariffs), so some users must ask for a tax declaration certificate when they want to buy Vision Pro through non-certified channels in China. "Vision Pro who has not filed a tax return, and it will still be a tax audit when I go abroad and come back in the future."

For the sales of the Chinese version of the Vision Pro in the domestic market, IDC China analyst Ye Qingqing analyzed the "AI Light Year": "Users who are chasing hot spots and trying early have already started before the release of the Chinese version, and for the remaining users in the consumer market, Vision Pro, as the first generation of Apple MR products, has extremely high threshold requirements for users in terms of price and getting started." ”

In Ye Qingqing's view, in addition to the price, the wearing experience and ecological content richness of Vision Pro need to be optimized. "In terms of ecological construction, the ecological content and application scenarios of the headset are not competitive compared with other devices. In fact, Apple has been making various attempts to build an ecosystem, but at present, on the whole, the feedback from the consumer market still feels that there are few practical footholds. Ye Qingqing analyzed.   

However, for Apple, the target users of the original Vision Pro are not C-end customers, and Apple's planning for this product focuses on the commercial side. Apple CEO Tim. Cook also revealed on the Q2 2024 earnings call that "the Apple Vision Pro has already been purchased by half of the Fortune 100 companies." ”

Duan Yongping, a well-known investor, also expressed a similar view, "Vision Pro is not a necessity at the moment, and it is unlikely to have significant economic value for Apple for a long time." At the moment, I just think it's good to watch movies, and I haven't had time to discover anything else. ”

In terms of sales, the Vision Pro has shipped no more than 500,000 units this year. "Apple previously expected Vision Pro sales to reach 800,000 units in 2024, but due to multiple factors, the demand for Vision Pro has exceeded expectations when it was first released, and the demand growth rate has been declining, causing the company to lower its sales forecast by nearly 50% recently." China Galaxy Securities Analysis.

Is downgrading and price reduction the way out?

In response to the Vision Pro's weaker-than-expected sales, Apple has paused development of its next-generation high-end headset and instead focused on releasing a cheaper model by the end of 2025, with a target price of about $1,500.

According to foreign media reports, in 2022, Apple will begin to develop a cheaper Vision series of products, which is internally codenamed N109. It weighs at least a third less than the Vision Pro. In terms of accessories, the N109 may retain a high-end display, but with fewer cameras, a simpler headband, and smaller speakers.

Too high cost and too large volume are the two main drawbacks of the original Apple headset. "The cost is related to the scale and the number of shipments, and the volume will change with the iteration of the version, and when the Apple headset starts to sell on a large scale, these two problems will be slowly solved. If the price of Apple's headset drops to 10,000, I believe that this price will be accepted by the public, after all, the price of the high-end version of Apple's mobile phone was also 10,000 when it was first released. Chen Hua, the founder of Sing Bar, said to "AI Light Year".           

However, the VR and XR industries have mixed reviews of Apple's efforts to increase sales by downgrading and cutting prices.

Li Jie, vice president of Pimax Technology, told AI Lightyear, "Among the many consensuses provided by Apple for the industry, the most important point is about the product technology route. MR products based on VR+VST (Video See Thru) as the core technology have officially assumed the important task of general-purpose hardware in the era of spatial computing. ”

Before the launch of Apple's Vision Pro, the VR industry was dominated by the concept of "shipment first, low price and strong promotion" of the Internet giants involved, behind which was a typical Internet way of thinking with "network effect" as the core. For example, Pico, which was acquired by ByteDance.

A person familiar with the matter told "AI Lightyear", "I believe that ByteDance, which is 'surprisingly strong', spent 4 billion yuan a year to lay out the volume of Pico in the terminal, but the performance of pico4 is still not as expected, and the release time of Pico 5 has not yet been determined." ”

The release of Apple's Vision Pro provides another idea for the MR industry, which is to gradually increase shipments, reduce costs, and achieve step-by-step coverage of the entire market from top to bottom on the premise of ensuring excellent user experience and healthy gross profit.

"The second path is the normal development path of durable consumer goods with high technical content, and it is also the path that Pimax's high-end product series has insisted on taking in the past few years, and Apple's participation has made this path one of the mainstream paths." Li Jie said.

For the consumer market, headset manufacturers need to control the price if they want to make a breakthrough in magnitude, but this is not necessarily the case for high-end headsets for the commercial market. "Low price is not necessarily the way out for Apple's headset, but optimizing the landing and wearing comfort of ecological content is the only way for Apple and any manufacturer." Ye Qingqing, an analyst at IDC China, told AI Lightyear.

View original image 51K

• 

• 

Personal opinion, for reference only