What Decides Whether Apple's Vision Pro Succeeds

Originally published in Chinese on April 11, 2024. Apple's Vision Pro is a headset that Apple wants to turn into a new kind of computing device. The key elements for judging it are fairly clear. The first is whether shipments can reach a certain mark, which decides coverage. The second is whether the number of apps can reach a certain mark, which in the end decides how much time users spend on it. I once used these two measures on Meta's Quest. Even after Quest passed them, the excitement I expected never came. We could see a huge possibility in this industry, and it never happened. What Quest 2 taught The numbers in 2021 In 2021, data from an upstream supplier said Quest had more than 10 million users. I took 10 million users to be enough to support a small ecosystem with a commercial loop. So I surveyed developers in China intensively and looked closely at the apps and products there. In the end I did not invest in a single one. Why the app ecosystem stalled A few reasons, briefly. Costs and returns did not match for developers The first is that developing apps on the platform is very expensive. A small app does not earn its money back, and a large app costs too much to build. If you want to make the best-experience game or a video with broad appeal, what you sell it for does not cover the cost. For developers it is not a good platform.