Apple continues to explore ideas for smart glasses and other wearable devices, according to Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman.
“The Vision Pro headset, despite being a technical marvel, is clearly a commercial flop,” he says. “Apple realizes that it’s not worth continuing to invest in this approach — unless it’s just to increase the device’s specifications or reduce the cost and weight. So attention has shifted to figuring out a more appealing form factor.”
Gurman says that Apple is back to trying to get standalone AR glasses to work — lightweight AI-infused spectacles that you could wear all day. He says it’ll probably take Apple another three to five years to crack this challenge, at best, but the company is exploring a lot of ideas and underlying technologies right now.
Gurman says that Apple also is still discussing the idea of making its own version of the popular Ray-Ban glasses from Meta Platforms.
However, he says the Vision Pro isn’t being discontinued even though signs are pointing to the company’s Vision Products Group shifting its resources to other form factors.
“But Apple can’t just let the Vision Pro die out. It has invested too much and needs to keep churning out the device’s visionOS updates (the third edition will be a pretty feature-packed release, I’m told),” Gurman says. “And at some point, the Vision Pro with the M2 processor will become outdated. Apple has cooked up a future version based on a new M-series chip and continues to explore cheaper varieties.”
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