July 1, 2024

Solid State Lighting Design

Find latest world news and headlines today based on politics, crime, entertainment, sports, lifestyle, technology and many more

Apple has launched the Vision Pro glasses for sale outside the US for the first time.

Apple has launched the Vision Pro glasses for sale outside the US for the first time.
Zoom in / The Vision Pro device is on display at the Apple Store in Tokyo.

apple

Apple’s Vision Pro headphone goes on sale outside the US for the first time today, in the first of two waves of expanded availability.

The $3,499 “spatial computing” device was launched in February in the US, but it hasn’t revolutionized the technology world. Part of this was to launch at a regional level, where some of the largest markets still lack access.

Apple announced that the product would be sold internationally during its keynote at the Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month.

The first new markets to receive Vision Pro shipments were China, Japan and Singapore, where the product went on sale today.

The second wave will come on July 12, with the headset launching in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the UK.

When we first tested the Vision Pro in February, we wrote that it was a technically impressive device with a lot of untapped potential. It works very well as a personal entertainment device for frequent travelers, in particular. However, its productivity and gaming applications still need to expand to justify its high price.

Of course, there have been conflicting rumors lately about how expensive Apple plans to keep its mixed reality hardware. One report claimed that the company has shelved a new version of the Vision Pro for now, opting instead to develop a cheaper alternative for release in 2025.

But another report in Bloomberg suggested that this was an exaggeration. It simply noted that the Vision Pro 2 was slightly delayed from its original target launch date and said that the cheaper model would come first.

See also  What to expect in October

Either way, availability will have to expand and prices will eventually have to come down if AR is to become the computing revolution that Apple CEO Tim Cook has predicted, and this international launch is the next step in testing whether there’s a market for it.