[The Economist] Apple’s Vision Pro is a technical marvel. Will anyone buy it?

vocab

- sleek: smooth and glossy as if polished sleek dark hair // having a smooth well-groomed look

- commercial flop: complete failure

- in lieu of: in the place of : instead of

- cluncky: clumsy in style

- retrench: cut down

- hoover up: "to remove something from a floor or other surface using a vacuum cleaner (= a machine that sucks up dust and dirt):" (Cambridge Dictionary)

 

Summary

- Unlike other headsets, it (Vision Pro) has a different feature: an eye-tracking controller in lieu of using hand-held controllers.

- Initial sales target was 3 million units, but now some analysts expect less than 200,000 units in 12 months. 

- Its sales is expected to be low because of 1) its price(expensive), 2) low battery performance (with "cluncky external battery"), and 3) inconvenience.

- This negative projection affects competitors (Meta: scale back its enthusiasm, "Snap: no hurry to bring out a new version of its AR Spectacles")

- Even though it is not evaluated as "consumer product", but evaluated as "expensive developer kit," why did Apple force launched that product? There are two reasons: 1) To deal with its competitor, Meta, which "hoover(s) up" related talent. 2) To show what's next.

- Apple has advantages over its rivals: huge existing user base (2 billion users)