UNEXPECTEDLY! Apple quietly discontinuing flagship $3,500 Vision Pro headset due to lackluster sales.

Apple has made a quiet, tactical retreat from augmented and virtual reality, scaling back production of its $3,500 Vision Pro headset.

One employee at Chinese manufacturer Luxshare — which is under contract to perform the final assembly for Vision Pro — revealed that the tech giant informed them that manufacturing of the product may need to ‘wind down’ by November’s end.

Luxshare, according to this source, has already cut assembly rates in half: putting together about 1,000 Vision Pro units/day, down from a high of 2,000 units/day.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, however, has put on a brave face, saying that the $3,500 AR-goggles simply are ‘not a mass-market product.’

‘Right now, it’s an early-adopter product,’ Cook said late last month, in a sprawling interview.

‘People who want to have tomorrow’s technology today—that’s who it’s for. Fortunately, there’s enough people who are in that camp that it’s exciting.’

In fact, industry analysts at Counterpoint Research estimate that Apple only sold around 370,000 of its Vision Pro headsets in the first three quarters of 2024, figures dwarfed by the millions of cheaper Quest headsets sold by its rival Meta.

And with the holiday season fast approaching, their analysts see no signs of improvement, predicting only 50,000 or so more Vision Pro’s will be sold this year.

Based on my initial take on the product, and, much like Google glasses before them, how uncool they made a wearer look, I can’t say I’m at all shocked by this news.