Supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claims the cheaper Apple Vision headset is delayed "beyond 2027".
This would mean, if you believe Kuo, that Apple's next headset will instead be the straightforward refresh of Vision Pro with the M5 chipset that he claimed last month will enter mass production in late 2025.
Interestingly, Kuo claims the cheaper Vision headset has been delayed beyond 2027 "for a while now". However, less than two weeks ago The Information reported that Apple told a supplier to expect to produce enough components for 4 million units of the cheaper headset, and less than a month ago Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported that it's still coming in 2025, priced around $2000.
Clearly, either Kuo is wrong or Gurman is. And it's notable that we've never seen these two sources report such drastically different claims.
David Heaney
Kuo speculates that the delay beyond 2027 is that "simply reducing the price wouldn't help create successful use cases".
However, if we assume this significant delay is real for the sake of argument, it seems more likely it would be related to the struggle to achieve a significantly reduced price in the first place. As recently as April, Gurman reported that Apple was "still flummoxed by how exactly to bring down the cost" for a cheaper non-Pro Vision headset.
Affordable (Micro-)OLED
The biggest contributor to Vision Pro's price is its near-4K micro-OLED displays from Sony. Estimates place the cost to Apple at $350 each, meaning $700 per headset.
Before Apple Vision Pro even launched, The Information's Wayne Ma reported that Apple was testing new micro-OLED displays from two Chinese suppliers, SeeYa and BOE, to try to bring down the cost of future Vision headsets. However, more recent reports suggested both potential suppliers were failing to meet Apple's stringent quality standards.
In the past few months we've seen multiple reports from South Korean news outlet The Elec about Apple asking display suppliers like LG and Samsung about cheaper, lower resolution micro-OLED displays, and Japan's JDI pitching Apple a regular OLED display with density that approaches micro-OLED, an approach which Samsung is also exploring.
David Heaney
The high-density regular OLED option in particular could be significantly lower cost than any micro-OLED. However, as the report noted, they're still early in development, and wouldn't enter mass production until 2026 at the earliest.
So if Kuo's claim of a delay beyond 2027 is correct, it would line up with Apple waiting for these displays so it can deliver a truly affordable Vision headset, priced closer to a MacBook Air or iPad Pro than today's $3500 Vision Pro.
Again though, Kuo's claim contradicts other sources, so we'll keep a close eye on the rumor mill in the coming months for any corroboration of the idea of the cheaper Apple Vision headset being heavily delayed.
