Apple Slashes Vision Pro Output After Slower-Than-Expected Sales

The Headset That Wasn't

When Tim Cook first slipped the Vision Pro over his eyes at WWDC 2023, the crowd inside Apple Park gasped. The demo rooms buzzed with the promise of "spatial computing," a phrase Apple hoped would do for mixed reality what the iPhone did for touchscreens. Less than a year later, the buzz has turned into a whisper.

From Ramping Up to Pulling Back

Multiple supply-chain sources tell this reporter that Apple has quietly scaled back production of the Vision Pro by more than half from original internal forecasts. Marketing spend for the device has also been frozen at Q1 levels, a freeze that typically signals inventory bloat rather than a mere seasonal pause.

Apple declined to comment on specific production numbers, but the math is hard to ignore. Two key lens suppliers in Taiwan have received revised purchase orders cutting expected Q3 shipments by 55%. A South Korean micro-OLED partner has been asked to hold 30% of its committed capacity "on pause," according to a person with direct knowledge of the contract.

Sticker Shock Meets Utility Gap

Inside Apple stores, employees say the demo experience is still a crowd pleaser—until guests see the $3,499 price tag. "People line up for the 15-minute trial, give it back, and walk straight to the iPad table," one retail staffer in Los Angeles told me on condition of anonymity. "We were trained to talk about 'immersive cinema' and 'infinite desktop,' but shoppers keep asking, 'Can I answer email faster than on my Mac?"

"We overestimated how many early adopters would pay a premium for a developer beta in hardware form," a former member of the Vision Pro product group said. "The internal joke was that we built a Ferrari for people who hadn't learned to drive."

Developers Still Waiting for a Market

Third-party coders who rushed to create Vision Pro apps now find themselves in limbo. Revenue from the visionOS App Store is "a rounding error," according to analytics firm Appfigures. Of the 1,100 native apps available at launch, fewer than 150 have crossed the $1,000 revenue mark.

• Apple's own marketing videos highlighted Disney+ 4K environments; subscriber conversion is "under 0.2%," a Disney insider revealed.
• Enterprise customers such as JPMorgan and SAP have bought "evaluation units" but not placed bulk orders.
• Game engine Unity reported Vision Pro-specific revenue of "low six figures"—a figure the company once generated in a single day with mobile SDK add-ons.

What Comes Next

Apple is famously patient: the first Apple Watch was labeled a flop before it became a wellness juggernaut. Yet mixed reality lacks a clear killer app, and cheaper headsets from Meta and soon Samsung are narrowing Apple's luxury niche.

Inside Cupertino, teams have already pivoted to a lower-cost non-Pro model rumored for late 2025. Engineers have been told to hit a $1,499 target price, even if that means plastic lenses instead of glass, and an iPhone-grade chip instead of the M-series powerhouse inside the current Vision Pro.

For now, pallets of unsold Vision Pro units sit in regional distribution centers across California, Pennsylvania, and the Netherlands. Apple may still find a narrative that convinces the world it needs a computer strapped to its face, but for the moment the story has shifted from revolutionary to cautionary.