Tech giant Apple held a long-awaited conference on June 5 with the announcement of new products. The company's conferences are always well-received around the world, as they announce their innovative new products, which always attract huge interest from customers and also positively boost the stock growth. The hottest news from Monday's conference is the Vision Pro custom headset, which will become competition for Meta's recently announced headset Meta Quest Pro and also for Sony's VR2 model. In comparison to competing products, Apple has set its price tag quite high. The $3,499 apiece will bring augmented virtual reality supported by 12 cameras, Apple's M2 chip, and a special R1 chip. In addition, Apple announced a new M2 Ultra chip for the Mac Pro and Mac Studio or a larger version of the MacBook Air.
Shipments of the new headset are expected in early 2024, with an estimated initial order of 150 thousand units. The company's plan is not to target the broad market, also because of the high price tag. Using the headset requires a professional setup for a safe and fulfilling user experience. There have been some complications when introducing the product, indicating the need for further refinement of the technology. The company also announced a modification to the text correction feature, which coined the term "ducking". Users experienced annoyance when the system automatically corrected their original word to something expressive, and customers showed frustrations towards this shortcoming, so Apple will focus on tweaking these shortcomings.
Apple's stock performance over the past five years. (Source: Google)
The company's stock hit a record high over the past 17 months just before the conference. Over the course of this year, including thanks to the new headset, Apple stock has seen a more than 46% increase*, bringing it significantly closer to a market capitalization of $3 trillion. Analysts believe that virtual reality could be just the right new opportunity for the company to grow and develop technologically. S&P is thus awakening investors' interest in technology stocks thanks to artificial intelligence and new chips.
* Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
[1] Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and current expectations, which may be inaccurate, or on the current economic environment, which may change. Such statements are not guarantees of future performance. They involve risks and other uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by any forward-looking statements.
