Apple's headset is the company's biggest bet in years

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Apple’s (AAPL) Vision Pro is coming. And soon. The company announced on Monday that it will begin taking preorders for the headset beginning Jan. 19 at 8 a.m. ET, and that it will officially hit the company’s online and physical stores in the US on Feb. 2.

This isn’t just any product launch, though. This is Apple’s first new product category in nearly 10 years. It last leaped into a new industry segment with the Apple Watch in 2015. But there’s a big difference between the Vision Pro and the Apple Watch, outside of one going on your wrist and the other on your face.

The Apple Watch came to market at a time when fitness trackers and smartwatches were already well-established products. Fitbit was a household name when the Apple Watch hit, and people couldn’t stop talking about tracking their steps.

The AR/VR headset space, though, is still largely untested with Meta’s (META) Quest line of devices standing as the market leaders. And consumers don’t appear to be as hooked on those headsets as Meta hoped.

In 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported that more than half of Meta Quest headset owners didn’t use their devices just six months after buying them. And according to the Verge, Meta’s VP of VR Mark Rabkin specifically called out flagging user interest in the company’s Quest 2 headset during a February 2023 employee meeting.

FILE - The Apple Vision Pro headset is displayed in a showroom on the Apple campus after it's unveiling on June 5, 2023, in Cupertino, Calif. Apple's high-priced headset for toggling between the real and digital world will be available in its stores beginning Feb. 2, 2024 launching the trendsetting company's push to broaden the appeal of what so far has been a niche technology. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
The Apple Vision Pro headset. (Jeff Chiu/AP Photo, File) · ASSOCIATED PRESS

But Apple also has a powerful weapon that Meta doesn’t: an enormous number of services subscribers with access to Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade. And that alone could give Apple the kind of leg up on Meta it needs to dominate the AR/VR headset industry.

“Apple is walking into a market that has not really taken off … meaningfully in recent years,” IDC research analyst Ramon Llamas told Yahoo Finance. “But, you know … where Apple goes, markets tend to rise.”

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Apple is entering an unproven market

Apple’s Vision Pro headset, or spatial computer, as the company refers to it, will test the company’s ability to get consumers interested in a product category that still feels like an answer looking for a question.

So far, gaming has been one of the main reasons consumers have picked up AR/VR headsets. But even those experiences are far from mind-blowing. I’d rather play games on my PlayStation 5 and 65-inch OLED TV than on any headset. Wearing a headset for more than a half hour can be uncomfortable, the graphics on the PS5 are far superior to those any headset can produce, and certain games simply don’t translate well to the headset form factor.

“People don’t play 'Fortnite' on a headset,” said Forrester VP and principal analyst Julie Ask. “They're playing it on their PC because it's so fast and the graphics are so good.”