Apple’s $3,499 Vision Pro is still a niche buy. As Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman puts it in the latest issue of his Power On newsletter ,“the core issues are price and a lack of sufficiently compelling features.” Accessories and visionOS 26 help, but they don’t answer the “why now?” for most people. Sales appear well under 1 million units in the U.S., and Apple’s own tone hasn’t signaled urgency. Tim Cook’s “thanks for bringing it up” on the latest earnings call felt more like a status check than a strategy shift.
Apple introduced immersive video at launch, then slow-rolled it. According to Gurman, only a couple dozen titles have appeared so far, leaving owners with not much content to watch. That’s a problem, because content is the engine that sells hardware. Without a steady cadence of wow-worthy releases, the headset struggles to justify itself as more than tech demos and living-room show-and-tell.
The next model, reportedly due as soon as this year, is expected to focus on a faster chip—necessary, given how demanding the device is, but unlikely to change the broader narrative. The bigger swing—a cheaper, lighter Vision Pro isn’t expected until 2027, per Gurman’s reporting. That’s a long wait in consumer tech, and the risk is obvious: the category could lose momentum before the reboot even arrives. Consider this a reminder that Apple Intelligence showed up nearly two years after ChatGPT and is still catching up; timing matters.
To Apple’s credit, it is laying the groundwork for a healthier ecosystem. There’s a new Mac app to streamline immersive-video production and tools from partners like Blackmagic to capture and edit spatial content. A racing documentary is even on the way, which hints at what’s possible when the pipeline hums. Let’s be real: third parties won’t carry the platform if Apple itself isn’t releasing premium, can’t-miss experiences on a regular schedule.
So what moves the needle right now? Treat immersive releases like tentpole events—trailers, premiere dates, behind-the-scenes, and weekly drops that give owners a reason to put the headset on. Lean into sports and concerts where presence matters. Consider bundling a rotating slate of top-tier immersive titles with Apple TV+ to ease the sticker shock. And seed a handful of flagship projects across genres to prove the medium, not just the hardware.
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