Oculus is capped at the gamer market size, which is in the 10M units range.
Apple is targeting the wider compute market which is capped at Billions. They won't sell billions in 2025, or at the $3500 price point, but this is the market they are building towards capturing.
Think of Palm Pilot vs iPhone. It's a decade-scale play.
* edit: Let me just add that Apple TV hardware which is largely abandoned and afterthought product line considered unsuccessful, for example is a 13M/year item for Apple. 20M lifetime is not mass market.
> * edit: Let me just add that Apple TV hardware which is largely abandoned and afterthought product line considered unsuccessful, for example is a 13M/year item for Apple. 20M lifetime is not mass market.
Besides it seems like comparing apples to oranges. Apple TV works with existing TVs which are already billions in numbers. VR devices are completely new devices. Meta has sold 20M headsets SO FAR, not in its lifetime.
Weird semantics on so far vs lifetime.. it's the same thing.
Meta and Apple are targeting different markets and you can tell by Apple's product videos.
To me, Meta is entrenched in the currently gamer centric VR market. I call it this because 100% of the people I know who have been excited by VR over the last 10 years have been young, single, male gamers. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but the marketing & people excited about the product, to me, seem to align there.
Apple doesn't even call it VR because they are trying to target a much wider market.
I agree with this (though trying is the operative word). It seems a strange moment in time to choose to call the game for Apple though, at a grand total of 0 units shipped and a price point of $3500+tax. It is literally not knowable now in 2023 if they will be able to manage to do what Tesla did, in transitioning from “toy for rich jerks” to “reasonable mass market choice, and we can manufacture them in mass quantities too.” I mean, it’s not even clear yet if the rich jerk set will adopt it.
Tesla is not a great analogy for this. Their lowest priced vehicle is only just below the average sales price of all new cars and that vehicle excludes the Tesla brand features that Apple would not strip out of their product. And that is when the average vehicle sales price has increased 10k in the last four years. So for the analogy to work Apple would effectively have to strip down their device to the point that it is just an expensive copy cat Quest and Meta would have to raise prices 50% (to be fair, the price rise might happen).
So why do you think Oculus is capped at gamer market size? What about the AVP is something Meta can't replicate in a generation or two? Considering the install base, I would think Meta will be able to keep their app store stocked as well.
Are you just saying that Meta has the wrong focus or do you think Apple has a moat?
Oculus is not capped at the gamer market size. It's capped by hardware constraints. Until very recently, the hardware wasn't there for high resolution microdisplays and lenses. Most VR equipment has been built using off the shelf parts and modified smart phone hardware. This stuff is still great for gaming but not so great for dealing with text or anything requiring anything super high resolution.
Now that the chip shortage and supply chain issues have calmed down a bit, we're seeing big improvements. But these constraints also apply to Apple which is why their first run of Vision Pro headsets is set to be around 100,000 units. Hardware is the constraint.
That said, the focus for Oculus has always been much larger than gaming. The whole "Metaverse" pitch isn't a pitch for a product. The "Metaverse" is just another jangly marketing term just like "Information Superhighway" was for the Internet back in 90s. It just means using VR/AR for everyday situations like work, entertainment, etc.
I agree, that's why I said "what mass market there is". Because the whole thing is completely speculative that there can be mass market here ever, and that applies as much to Apple as Meta. None of the so far demonstrated devices are really appropriate for that.
I don't know why you think Meta is "capping" themselves to gaming market or why you think that market tops out at 10M units. That is where they started, but clearly that's not their whole vision (or why did they bother making the Quest Pro?).
Quick question for Boz: so are you saying the Quest Pro was line of business proof of concept to give cover for PMF to downstream the tech into Quest 3?
You might be right, but what makes you think Oculus can't grow beyond the gamer market? I ask because they identified a VR company that was focused on VR productivity as a competitor, so they're clearly thinking beyond gaming.
Meta is targeting one billion people in VR. They have stated that numerous times throughout the years. Meta does not like gaming, they tried numerous times to move away from it and focus on social VR. At their conferences over the last few years gaming gets a quick trailer show and than they go back talking about the Metaverse.
Meta's focus on games right now is not by choice or by vision, but simply because that's the only VR product they have that actually sells. Kids love Quest and VR. Nobody bought the QuestPro for social VR or for work-in-VR. Horizon World doesn't seem to gain traction either, everybody is still doing VRChat. Gaming was also not their idea, the gaming focus came from the original Oculus company they bought, they just have been unable to move past that.
The difference between Apple and Meta is that Apple has a clear vision, they are building a device that works as full desktop replacement. They completely skipped any of the classic VR topics at their presentation. VisionPro is "just" a better monitor, everything else is optional and come later.
Meta on the other side doesn't really know what they want, they have this vague vision of VR being big in the future and they want to secure their place in that future by throwing money at it. But they don't know how to get there. So they have a lot of gaming here, a bit social there and a bit of VR-as-desktop, but none of it is polished, lots of it isn't even functional and nothing is ever used to its full potential. Worse yet, they handicap themselves, their VR must be mobile, since they want to own the VR platform, so their PC support ends up lackluster, despite all the best VR content still being on PC. They want to have ads and collect data, so kids under 13 aren't allowed on their platform, despite being very popular in that age group. It's all a mess.
Apple is targeting the wider compute market which is capped at Billions. They won't sell billions in 2025, or at the $3500 price point, but this is the market they are building towards capturing.
Think of Palm Pilot vs iPhone. It's a decade-scale play.
* edit: Let me just add that Apple TV hardware which is largely abandoned and afterthought product line considered unsuccessful, for example is a 13M/year item for Apple. 20M lifetime is not mass market.