TMTPost -- Apple Inc. will start launching Vision Pro, its most expensive offering and way more expensive than competing headsets, outside the United States late June.

Credit：Apple

At its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) kicked off Monday, Apple said it will first sell its mixed reality Vision Pro in three countries including China, Japan and Singapore on June 28th , followed by five Western countries including Germany, France, the U.K., Australia and Canada on July 12th. Preorders for China and other two Asian countries will open on June 13th at 06:00 p.m. Pacific Time, or June 14th at 09:00 a.m. Beijing Time, and consumers in Germany and other four countries will be pre-oder the device on June 28th at 05:00 a.m. Pacific Time.

Vision Pro first went on sale in the United States on February 2 with a starting price of US$3,499. The whole package, adding storage and accessories like straps, can cost as much as US$4,500. Vision Pro is the most expensive consumer headsets available in the world, about seven times expansive than the starting price of Meta’s Quest 3,  and is also pricer than Meta’s premium headset, the Quest Pro, which starts at US$999. Apple China website shows Vision Pro costs RMB29,999 in mainland China.

Apple said Vision Pro seamlessly blends digital content with the physical world and unlocks powerful spatial experiences in visionOS, controlled by the most natural and intuitive inputs possible — a user’s eyes, hands, and voice. “The era of spatial computing has arrived,” Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said in January when the company announced preorders in the U.S. began on January 9. “Apple Vision Pro is the most advanced consumer electronics device ever created. Its revolutionary and magical user interface will redefine how we connect, create, and explore.”

Apple Vision Pro will debut in new markets this summer with visionOS 1.2, which supports the respective languages. Users will receive new features with the release of visionOS 2 this fall. Apple said the updated operating system enables user to create spatia photos from 2D images. They can take existing photos from their photo library and instantly transform them into spatial photos. visionOS 2 will offer new gestures for easy navigation and users can open Control Center to get quick access to frequently used features such as notifications, Mac Virtual Display. Users also can import spatial video to their Macs, edit in Final Cut Pro, and view it in Apple Vision Pro.

Extended reality (XR) headset shipments this year will increase by a record 3.9 million units to clock a high double-digit year-over-year (YoY) growth, Counterpoint Research expected in January. While Apple is expected to sell about half a million units of Vision Pro in 2024, marking up a low single-digit share of the global XR market, the first iteration of the headset will primarily attract die-hard Apple fans, developers, early adopters and enterprise users, said Harmeet Singh Walia, senior analyst at the global technology market research firm. The consumer interest that Apple’s entry is generating will benefit market incumbents offering competitively priced headsets, towards which many enthusiasts who wish to try the technology without incurring Apple’s hefty price tag would gravitate, boosting the global XR market, according to the analyst.