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Morgan Stanley dubs Apple Vision Pro a 'free call option on spatial computing'

Apple Vision Pro in an Apple Store.

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Wowed by their experience with Apple Vision Pro, analysts at investment bank Morgan Stanley see "immense" long-term potential for the Spatial Computing headset that Wall Street has yet to fully appreciate.

In its first weekend of availability, the Apple Vision Pro received considerable interest from early adopters and industry observers alike. Among them were members of Morgan Stanley's AAPL equity research team who spent a full three days immersed in device's world of spatial computing, having an eye-opening experience that left them jazzed up about its future.

"The long-term potential of the Vision Pro is immense, and against low investor expectations," analyst Erik Woodring said, adding that the success of the device and its successors are "effectively a free call option on Apple innovation."

In particular, the analyst is bullish on the Vision Pro's prospects to mature into a desirable productivity tool for consumers while serving a variety of interest within the enterprise, such as remote training, digital showrooms and in-field remote repairs. Others have lauded potential use cases in surgical, construction and industrial applications.

For the time being, Woodring sees content consumption serving as the Vision Pro's "killer app." He was duly impressed by the clarity and sharpness of its dual displays, which are "incredible" and make you feel like you are have teleported yourself into the environment you're watching.

"It's an entirely new way of consuming content, and is as close to the 'real world' as you can get without physically being there," he said.

In general, his team found experiences of roughly 30 minutes in a mixed-reality setting to be most preferable. Ultimately, he sees the device emerging as a "content powerhouse" with the advent of live sports, graphic-intensive flicks, and mixed-reality games on its platform.

At $3,500 plus tax, Apple Vision Pro certainly isn't for everyone. It's not sharable, has some pixelation issues around the periphery, and will require a physical Bluetooth keyboard to actually be productive in its current incarnation.

Woodring expects these limitations to be addressed as the product matures, believing there's "immense" potential for upside surprise to Apple's bottom line over next three to five years.

Morgan Stanley reiterated its overweight rating and $220 price target on shares of AAPL. The stock is up a fraction of a percent to $188.32 in afternoon trading on the NASDAQ.



21 Comments

omasou 8 Years · 646 comments

What is going on with the world?

I have NEVER seen as many journalists, reviewers, etc. focus on the positives and potentials of an Apple product!

Instead of the norm reporting that focus on the negatives and how the product is a failure. This time they explicitly stating they instead understand that this is a Gen 1 product and that the negatives will eventually be resolved going forward.

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nubus 9 Years · 646 comments

omasou said:
I have NEVER seen as many journalists, reviewers, etc. focus on the positives and potentials of an Apple product!

Instead of the norm reporting that focus on the negatives and how the product is a failure. This time they explicitly stating they instead understand that this is a Gen 1 product and that the negatives will eventually be resolved going forward.

They are scared of getting it wrong. No, they don't understand that it is Gen 1, and you're wrong if you believe all Gen 1 products do become a success - Newton, Segway, iPod Hi-Fi, New Coke, and so many more. Some got several revisions but still failed.  https://museumoffailure.com/ 

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torb9h 9 Years · 15 comments

$4B is way too conservative. If the number of 200K units are ti be believed that’s close to a billion already after it’s just launched in one country 

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jimh2 9 Years · 676 comments

Some seriously smart people at Morgan Stanley: High price, anemic app selection, made not to be shared, GEN2 will be better. I would never trust their judgement on anything if this is the best they have to offer in terms of commentary.

I would not allow myself to be quoted saying what is obvious about most every product made.

tht 24 Years · 5676 comments

Morgan Stanley currently forecasts that Apple's headset business will "conservatively" ramp up to $4 billion per year in revenue after four years. In theory, this would be below the product ramps of the Apple Watch
 and 
AirPods
 in their post-launch timings.
$4b per year is 1.1m units at $3500 in the 4th year of sales? Yeah, conservative. They may be able to do that in year 2 or year 3.

As a contrast, Meta's Reality Labs division has never made $4b per year. Here's Reality Labs' financial performance:


This is amazing, and speaks to Zuckerberg's absolutely control of Meta. That operating loss line continues to scale with the revenue line. This implies that if Meta sells more Quest units, they will have more operating losses. IOW, for every Quest sale they have at $500, they lose about $2500.

A normal CEO would have stopped this a year ago, at least. That loss line has to stop getter bigger. There has to be projections in Meta when the Quest ecosystem can pay for itself, and it looks very far away. 

Would be interesting to see what the AVP financials are like.

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