On Friday, Apple’s virtual reality headset, the Vision Pro, had its official debut in the United States. The headset will start to arrive or be available for pickup at Apple Store locations for customers who placed reservations.
To mark the launching of the headgear, Apple CEO Tim Cook made an appearance on Friday morning at the company’s flagship Fifth Avenue shop in New York City. During the event, Cook discussed the Vision Pro’s high sticker price with CNBC’s Jim Cramer and referred to it as “tomorrow’s technology today.” The Vision Pro is available for $3,500.
“People can spread their payments out over time, and so that’s one affordability kind of thing,” Cook said, referring to a monthly financing plan that buyers can choose. “It’s chock-full of invention. It’s got 5,000 patents on it.”
Cook continued, “We think we priced it at the right level considering the value of it.”
During the company’s earnings call on Thursday, Cook mentioned Walmart, Nike, Vanguard, Stryker, Bloomberg, and SAP as examples of organisations that “have started leveraging and investing” in the Vision Pro as a platform for employees and customers. Cook also stated that the headset is being adopted as an enterprise product.
However, on Thursday Cook stated that he believes Apple can remain “both” a consumer- and enterprise-focused company going forward with the Vision Pro now among its offerings, given the device’s “ton of use cases”.” He claimed that the headset has over 600 apps and games that are specially designed to provide a “spatial computing” experience.
Apple on Thursday announced first-quarter results that beat expectations for revenue and profit. Apple’s wearables business (also known as other products) beat expectations, but sales fell 11% year over year. The Vision Pro will join the Apple Watch and AirPods in the wearables category, but analysts don’t expect the headset to generate significant sales initially.