Meta Can Ride Apple’s Coattails to Victory in Mixed Reality
The iPhone maker’s new $3,500 headset is generating a rising tide of interest in the metaverse. How can Mark Zuckerberg capitalize? Fitness.
Meta’s $499 Quest 3 headset can benefit from the buzz around Apple’s $3,500 Vision Pro.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
It’s generally accepted that Mark Zuckerberg, in the two years since he renamed Facebook to Meta Platforms Inc., has done a poor job of selling his metaverse vision to the masses. The words “metaverse,” “virtual reality” and “augmented reality” have all become so tainted, in fact, that the newest arrival in the sector refuses to use any of them. Apple instead touts “spatial computing” when describing its Vision Pro headset, which is being released early next month.
Will spatial computing prove more marketable than the metaverse? Maybe. The Vision Pro release will for sure bring a renewed buzz around the mixed-reality concept that only Apple can generate thanks to its impeccable reputation for hardware excellence. Given its $3,500 price tag, however, and a limited production run, the Vision Pro’s first iteration won’t be an iPhone moment. As I’ve written before, most people’s experience of Apple’s most daring new device in more than a decade will be to peer at it in one of the company’s stores.