Apple may be setting itself up for a rare flop, with employees reportedly concerned about its mixed-reality headset.
Apple is well-known for churning out hit after hit. In fact, a person can count on one hand the number of Apple products that have flopped since Steve Jobs returned to the company. Nonetheless, according to The New York Times, employees are concerned that the upcoming mixed reality headset could be such a flop.
Eight current and former employees said many at Apple are skeptical that the headset will be a hit. The doubts range from the device’s $3,000 price tag to how useful it will be to whether the market even warrants such effort at this time.
To complicate matters even further, the mixed reality headset is a major departure from Apple’s usual approach. Apple is almost always slow to enter a market, learning from the failures of the companies that paved the way. The company then applies those lessons to create something unique that solves the existing pain points.
In the case of mixed reality, however, the market is still evolving and Apple has to create all-new elements that will help define it.
“Apple is always pretty good at coming into a market when the market is already established and changing that market,” said Carolina Milanesi, a consumer tech analyst for the research firm Creative Strategies. “This is not the case for Apple VR and XR. There’s still a lot of learning.”
These various factors make Apple’s foray into mixed reality its most ambitious gamble yet.
