William Gallagher
A new report claims that major manufacturing are plaguing Apple Vision Pro assembly, with big cuts not just in 2023, but for the foreseeable future as well.
Apple will of course not confirm any orders or volumes of manufacturing for any of its devices. But a previous report about Sony as an exclusive supplier of the Vision Pro's screens said that company's maximum was 900,000 displays in the first year.
However, according to the Financial Times, Apple was actually expecting to make a million of the Vision Pro in a year — and now cannot. It's claimed that Apple has now dropped its orders to around 400,000 Vision Pro units in 2024.
Reportedly, this is due to the sheer complexity of manufacturing the device, according to unspecified sources "close" to Apple and to supplier Luxshare. It's believed that Luxshare is the sole assembler of the Vision Pro.
The manufacturing difficulties are said to center on both the internal displays and the external, outward-facing and curved display. It's said that the yield from this device, the number of defect-free units that can be completed, is a major difficulty.
UK newspaper the Financial Times also reports that the second generation of the Apple Vision Pro has been delayed, though it is not clear how. The second generation is reportedly to feature displays made by Samsung and LG in, presumably, a different process.
That second generation model is expected to cost hundreds of dollars less than the first one. It's expected to be released in 2025.
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
15 Comments
If Sony could only offer a max of 900k displays, which would only work for 450k Vision Pro devices, then Apple never could've had 1000k on order since that would mean Sony would have to produce 2000k displays.
Because of that, anything else about complexity of the build is pointless unless there's speculation of a price increase and/or a delay beyond what Apple has promised. I see no such change.
tl;dr: Nothing to see here. Move along.
From now, until Apple releases, the Apple Vision Pro, get used to another variation on the theme Apple is ……….
This is one of the reasons why it costs $3500. Apple knows it's gonna be a pain in the ass to assemble and it would be a nightmare for them if it was affordable right now. And yes, before anyone quotes and chimes in the other part is the amount of next gen tech in the headset.
Yeah this really is meant as a super cool status symbol and a marketing campaign for the gen 2 version.
https://twitter.com/PatrickMcGee_/status/1675735072757141504?s=20