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Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference kicks off Monday in Cupertino. There, the company is expected to unveil its Reality Pro, a virtual reality (VR) headset costing about $3,000.

Many see VR glasses as the successor to the smartphone. Apple's Reality Pro reportedly targets productivity applications, offering features such as VR FaceTime calls and immersive video. But Apple is mostly moving into the territory of Mark Zuckerberg's Meta and his Quest headsets.

In the news. The , WWDC for short, is an annual conference for software developers organized by Apple. This year, the conference is expected to focus primarily on hardware.

Apple moves into Meta territory

  • So Apple is moving into Meta territory. That company, with its Quest 2 and Quest Pro devices, accounted for of the total 8.8 million VR headsets sold last year.
  • The pandemic turned out to be a boon for Mark Zuckerberg's company. Hundreds of millions of people stayed home; video chat and digital entertainment flourished.
    • The expectation for a next generation of hardware and software was that these experiences would improve even more and demand more of our time.
    • But since 2021, much has changed. As the world has reopened, enthusiasm for a range of digital experiences has waned.
    • Witness the Zoom share. That served as a benchmark for investors' belief in Internet productivity. It peaked in October at $559. Today it is still worth barely more than 10 percent of that amount.
  • Meta bet entirely on VR headsets, but success remains elusive for now. more than half of Quest headsets are not used after six months.

Cautious ambitions

Zoom in. Apple's short-term ambitions for the Reality Pro are cautious. But the company does envision a future in which knowledge workers wear headsets all day.

  • Apple initially calculated that it could sell about 3 million units a year. It has since reduced those estimates to 900,000 units. (By comparison, the company sells more than 200 million iPhones a year.)

ChatGPT is where the focus is

Zoom out. Where is this going? According to Apple specialist Mark Gurman, the company has find for the device. By that is meant an experience that is sufficient to justify the high price tag as well as drive daily use.

  • In that context, it is funny that, after investing billions of dollars in the VR and crypto hype, it is ChatGPT that has managed to capture the world's attention with a text box.
  • It will probably take another four years or more for a company to the to achieve a true VR-centered platform shift.
  • Either way, Apple has time and usually eventually succeeds in perfecting hardware.
    • Apple did not produce the first PC, yet the first smartphone, nor the first smartwatch. But the company did manage to capture large parts of the global market for all three of those products. So the process is far from complete.

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