Apple is quietly discontinuing its flagship device due to lackluster sales

Apple has quietly and tactically retreated from augmented and virtual reality, scaling back production of its $3,500 Vision Pro headset.

An employee of Chinese manufacturer Luxshare – which is under contract to carry out final assembly for Vision Pro – revealed that the tech giant told them that production of the product may have to be ‘phased out’ by the end of November.

According to this source, Luxshare has already halved its assembly speed, assembling approximately 1,000 Vision Pro units per day, compared to a maximum of 2,000 units per day.

However, Apple CEO Tim Cook has put on a brave face by saying that the $3,500 AR glasses are simply “not a mass-market product.”

“Right now it’s an early adopter product,” Cook said in a wide-ranging interview late last month.

‘People who want to have the technology of tomorrow today, that’s what it’s for. Fortunately, there are enough people in that camp that it is exciting.’

In fact, industry analysts at Counterpoint Research estimate that Apple sold only about 370,000 of its Vision Pro headsets in the first three quarters of 2024, figures that are dwarfed by the millions of cheaper Quest headsets sold by its rival Meta.

And with the holidays quickly approaching, their analysts see no signs of improvement. They predict that only about 50,000 more Vision Pros will be sold this year.

Some dissatisfied Vision Pro customers have rushed to return the headset, complaining that the small screen was eye-sore, uncomfortable, and had features that weren’t worth the high price

By contrast, Facebook’s parent company Meta sold about six million Quest 2 headsets and about three million of its next-generation Quest 3s in the first three quarters after they were first introduced, according to Counterpoint.

Meta’s Quest 3 costs $500, thousands less than the Vision Pro.

“Of course I would like to sell more,” Cook told the newspaper Wall Street Journal in October.

“I would always like to sell more of everything,” he explained, “because ultimately we want our products to get into the hands of as many people as possible.”

Cook, who also said he uses the futuristic Vision Pro every day, described the device’s launch as a success simply because he brought an initial product to market that software developers and app makers can now work with to create new products.

“I think it might be a success today from an ecosystem building perspective,” Cook said.

“With time everything gets better,” he added, “and that too will keep getting better and better.”

“It doesn’t happen overnight,” Cook noted, comparing the slow rollout of the Vision Pro to the early days of the iPod, iPhone and Airpods. “None of these did.”

But it’s clear from the company’s revised plans for a second model of the Vision Pro that there was disappointment over the low sales of this revolutionary new headset – a ‘spatial computing’ console intended to replace desktops and laptops.

Users have reported screen lag and occasional freezing on their Vision Pro headsets. One user said the software had the most bugs of any first-generation product he’d ever used, adding that the “wow factor” doesn’t outweigh the fact that “I’m wearing this big thing on my head.” .

This withdrawal was first reported in June by The Information, which learned that Apple was working on a more affordable Vision glasses product with fewer features, hoping to release the budget model sometime before the end of 2025.

Development on a true second-generation version of the more expensive headset, tentatively titled Vision Pro 2, had been put on hold, the tech news site reported.

Elsewhere in Apple’s supply chain for the Vision Pro, some factory workers have reported that production of the device’s internal components had been halted as early as May.

Anonymous sources at three suppliers working within Apple’s pipeline have currently built enough parts to make between 500,000 and 600,000 Vision Pro headsets.

Apple previously told one of its suppliers to anticipate producing components needed for about 8 million Vision Pros over the life of the devices, Apple said. The information.

However, Apple CEO Tim Cook (above) has put on a brave face by saying that the $3,500 AR glasses are simply “not a mass-market product.” He added: ‘Right now it’s an early adopter product (…) People who want to have tomorrow’s technology today, that’s what it’s for’

The Cupertino-based tech giant appears to have lowered that expectation, however, telling at least one supplier to expect to build components for just 4 million units over the lifetime of the cheaper Vision Pro, codenamed N109.

Die-hard Apple fans online have continued to rubbish the Vision Pro, comparing its price tag less to luxury toy status and more to the historic price of true innovation.

One poster for Reddit’s r/VisionPro forum noted that the original Apple desktop computer, the Macintosh 128K, cost about $7,300, adjusted for inflation, when it was released on January 24, 1984.

“The original Macintosh was a $7,000 piece of consumer technology (in today’s dollars) that kind of changed the world,” argued the fan, a Vision Pro owner.

“It was short on memory, barely enough space on its single 400KB floppy drive, and didn’t really take off until the LaserWriter was introduced,” he added. “Now look.”

“I got the same feelings about the Vision Pro as I did about that first limited-edition little Mac.”

DailyMail.com has contacted Apple for comment and will update this article if the iPhone maker responds.