Apple Reportedly Still Seeking ‘Killer App’ for Vision Pro

Months after Apple debuted the iPad, the tablet had more than 20,000 apps.

The company’s Vision Pro headset, now five months old, has a tenth of that figure.

And that could be a problem for Apple as it expands sales of its “spatial computing” product into Europe, Ars Technica reported Friday (July 12), with the company still seeking a “killer app” to woo customers toward the $3,500 device.

“The overall trajectory of the Vision Pro’s launch in February this year has been a lot slower than many hoped for,” George Jijiashvili, analyst at market tracker Omdia, told the news outlet.

“The reality is that most developers’ time and money will be dedicated to platforms with billions of users, rather than tens or hundreds of thousands.”

Omdia forecasts that Apple will sell 350,000 Vision Pros this year, jumping to 750,000 in 2025 and 1.7 million in 2026. However, those figures are considerably lower than the iPad, which sold nearly 20 million units in its first year.

The report also pointed to estimates from IDC, a tech market researcher, which suggest Apple shipped under 100,000 units of Vision Pro in the first quarter, less than half the Quest headsets sold by Apple competitor Meta.

IDC found that the device’s price tag allowed Apple to capture more than 50% of the total VR headset market by dollar value. However, analyst Francisco Jeronimo added: “The Vision Pro’s success, regardless of its price, will ultimately depend on the content available.”

That content, Ars Technica said, appears to be arriving slowly, as new apps for the Vision Pro have fallen off sharply since its launch. Major app developers like Google, Meta, Tencent, Amazon and Netflix have yet to bring any of their software or services to the headset, the report added.

Last month brought the news that Apple had paused work on its next high-end Vision Pro mixed-reality headset, choosing instead to focus on a more affordable, less full-featured version.

The more affordable headset is expected to be unveiled before the end of next year, while the successor to the $3,500 Vision Pro has been put on hold, with fewer employees assigned to work on it, a report by The Information said.

Writing here in May, PYMNTS Karen Webster argued that Apple’s troubles with the headset were part of a broader series of problems that had seen the HomePod flop and the company’s connected car project set aside.

“Like most AR/VR headsets, the Vision Pro seems a niche product that got a PR and fanboy pop but seems to struggle to gain adoption,” Webster wrote.