With Apple’s rumored AR headset said to go into mass production in March 2023, you can expect the latest hardware to pack quite an impressive assortment of internals. Unfortunately, all of that is said to come at a price, with the head-mounted wearable said to cost as much as $3,000.
New AR Headset Will Feature Performance Equivalent to a Portable Mac, With a Copious Number of Cameras Placed All Over the Wearable
Carrying a price between $2,000-$3,000 may discourage customers from proceeding with a purchase, but Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman implies that the product is a high-end one, featuring the latest generation of sensors and chips.
“Here’s what we already knew: The headset itself is likely to be priced between $2,000 and $3,000 because it’s a high-end product that will pack a Mac-level M2 chip, more than 10 cameras placed outside and inside the device, and the highest-resolution displays ever featured in a mass-market headset.”
Another reason why Apple might be inclined to charge customers a hefty sum is that the company is reported to start off with a very small initial batch of its AR headset. Pegatron is said to be the exclusive assembler of this device, with annual shipments expected to be between 0.7-0.8 million units. That number does not come close to Apple’s other yearly product shipments, which rake billions of revenue for the technology giant.
Since the AR headset is said to be targeted to a niche audience, it will have limited reach and, as a result, fewer shipments. To make it worthwhile for Apple and its assembling partner Pegatron, a high price point needs to be reached to make the launch profitable, which would give incentive to both parties to pursue future partnerships. These partnerships will likely be materialized through mass production of future AR products, and Apple has two more headsets and one pair of smart glasses in the pipeline.
Gurman previously said that the AR headset would ship with 16GB RAM, along with the same M2 chipset. It is not confirmed if this SoC will operate at the same performance level as Apple’s MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. If you did forget, the latest iPad Pro models featuring the same chipset is slower, but that is likely due to space constraints. Apart from that, having a multitude of cameras and a high-resolution display will likely make the mixed-reality content viewing experience from another planet.
