It’s a well-known fact that any new product release will be tried out by a select group of users before it hits the market. Apple’s VR/AR headset, which is set to launch at WWDC 2023 in June, seems to have been approved by Oculus founder Palmer Luckey.
According to Mark Gurman, Apple’s key executives have a “major gathering” once a year to review the headset’s development progress, and hundreds of executives got to experience the product last week.
What’s interesting about Gurman’s comments is that Apple’s design team earlier said the AR headset wasn’t ready to launch this year, yet Apple CEO Cook and COO Jeff Williams chose to ignore those concerns, probably believing that any further delays could give Apple’s competitors a greater advantage and so they had to rush the release.
Judging by previous reviews, Apple’s headset, likely to be named “Reality Pro,” could be the company’s most “polarizing” product to date, but for the Oculus founder, the head-mounted wearable device But for the founder of Oculus, the head-mounted wearable clearly made a great first impression.
However, given Luckey’s and Oculus’ popularity in the VR industry, some in the media believe he chose Apple to partner with for marketing and momentum.
For now, though, even if Luckey fully endorses the product, there’s no guarantee that the headset will be 100% successful when it hits the market. According to earlier estimates, Apple may only ship about 300,000 units of “Reality Pro” this year, although the unit price appears to be expected to reach $3000 (currently about RMB 20880).
