Chinese news outlet WallStreetCN reports Apple plans to launch the cheaper and lighter Vision headset as early as June 2025.
The report cites "the supply chain" as saying Apple is accelerating the launch from an original plan of September 2025, and claims the headset will weigh roughly 400 grams, significantly lighter than the 600-650 gram Vision Pro.
It also claims the supply chain is preparing for scale "at the level of tens of millions". This is an extraordinary claim, perhaps even unbelievable, given the current Vision Pro is produced at the scale of hundreds of thousands.
Tens of Millions!?
For the cheaper Vision headset to reach tens of millions scale would require a significant expansion of micro-OLED supply capacity to drive a much lower price point. The current Vision Pro is heavily supply constrained by Sony's limited micro-OLED display output. Last year The Information's Wayne Ma reported that Apple was testing new micro-OLED displays from two Chinese suppliers, BOE and SeeYa Technology. If the samples meet Apple's standards, Ma wrote, displays from these companies could be used in future Vision headsets.
Alternatively Apple could use LCD panels, which are an order of magnitude cheaper and already available at huge scale. But LCD is much less pixel dense than micro-OLED, and thus this would necessitate either greatly reduced resolution or a much bulkier design, so it's unlikely Apple will take this path.
Multiple Reports Point To Cheaper Vision Headset
This is far from the first time we've seen a report describing Apple's plans for a cheaper non-Pro Vision headset.
Supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo first reported that Apple was working on a cheaper headset a full year before Vision Pro was even revealed, with Kuo at the time saying Apple aimed to launch it in 2025.
Last year Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who reliably reported many details of Vision Pro before it was officially revealed or even acknowledged to exist by Apple, too reported on the existence of this cheaper headset, saying it will feature an A-series chipset (used in iPhones) instead of an M-series chipset and is "likely" to lack the EyeSight front display. The A17 Pro in the iPhone 15 Pro models has a GPU with 6 cores that's roughly 60% as powerful as the M2's GPU, so it seems reasonable an A18 Pro or A19 Pro might close the gap.
David Heaney
In that same report last year, Gurman said Apple "discussed prices ranging from $1500 to $2500". Just last week Gurman reiterated that Apple plans to launch a cheaper headset before a high-end Vision Pro successor, but said the company is "still flummoxed by how exactly to bring down the cost", implying the price and therefore scale of this headset is not as much of a sure thing as WallStreetCN's report might suggest.
