• by Todd Wasserman , May 22, 2023

Apple’s last big product launch was the Apple Watch in 2014, but the company is set for another key introduction next month.

According to rumors, the company is planning to debut an AR/VR headset at its Worldwide Developers Conference show on June 5, as reported in Forbes. The headset has been rumored for some time and pricing is apparently in the $3,000 range, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Unlike the Apple Watch or the iPad, Apple predicts a slower adoption for the headset, partially because of the price tag, but also because there haven’t been any hit VR/AR products yet.

In October 2022, Meta released Meta Quest Pro, a VR headset, for $1,500. But Meta Quest Pro didn’t get great reviews (“The problem is, the Quest Pro isn’t very good,” read one review in The Verge.) Meta cut the device’s price to $999 in March.

In the first quarter, the device brought in $339 million, “a minuscule sum for a company that brings in billions of dollars a quarter in advertising sales,” according to CNBC.

The hope is that Apple’s product will be so good that it will lift the whole category, something Apple did for when it launched the iPhone in 2007.

At the time, RIM’s BlackBerry was arguably the most-advanced smartphone on the market, but the iPhone’s large color screen, its lack of a physical keyboard, and its touchscreen presented a new paradigm for handheld devices.

We’ll soon discover if Apple can bring that magic to a new category.