On January 8, Apple officially announced that Vision Pro will be officially available in all Apple Stores and Apple Stores** in the United States on February 2, and the pre-sale time will start at 5 am on January 19. Apple CEO Tim Cook said: "The Apple Vision Pro is the most advanced consumer electronic device ever made, and its revolutionary and magical user interface willRedefining the way we connect, create, and explore. It is understood that the first batch of mass production of Apple Vision Pro is targeted to reach about 400,000 units, and the sales target for 2024 is 1 million units, and it is expected to increase sales to 10 million units in the third year. 
At Apple's official website at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June last year, Apple released a new product, Vision Pro, and for a while, this headset that looks full of technology quickly became a hot topic. Apple says Vision Pro will usher in a new era of spatial computing. The industry believes that this product has the potential to leverage the next era of human-computer interaction as a fulcrum. According to the estimation of CITIC**, the XR industry space is far more than one trillion yuan. At this time, the XR industry also experienced a major technological transformation, namely the shift from traditional virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology to mixed reality (MR) technology. What is XR?Extended Reality (Extended Reality), which combines the real and the virtual through computers to create a virtual environment that can be interacted with by humans and computers, is a collective term for VR Virtual Reality, AR Augmented Reality, and MR Mixed Reality.
Looking back at 2023, the XR industry is full of turmoil, with major manufacturers struggling to survive, Microsoft's industrial metaverse division disbanded, Google's AR glasses product research and development blocked, Byte's large-scale layoffs of the PICO team, Tencent's XR team disbanded, and Meta's metaverse business suffered a net loss of $3.7 billion. The XR track, which is at the cusp of the wind, is starting to "get cold". It can be seen that capital is no longer just obsessed with nuggets, and the consideration of XR "spending a lot of money" tends to be rationalFrom focusing on the concept stage to the technological breakthrough and innovation of the enterprise. 2023 is a special and critical year for XR companies and investors focusing on this track. Even at a time when there are uncertainties in the development of the XR industry, there are still many places and companies that maintain attention and support for the XR track. According to the latest news from 36Kr, Rokid has completed nearly 500 million yuan in C+ round of financing and will land three major centers in Hefei. This financing is the first layout of the AR glasses industry in Hefei, and it is also the largest single strategic financing in the domestic AR field in recent years. In addition, many old home appliance manufacturers such as Changhong, Gree, TCL, and Siemens have also begun to lay out the XR market, launching AR glasses, VR all-in-one machines and other products, trying to explore the blue ocean of the XR industry.
As a new generation of consumer electronics computing platform, the development difficulty of the XR industry lies in hardware technology and content ecology. The emergence of Apple's Vision Pro has brought a new turn for the development of the XR industry. According to data released by IDC, global augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) headset shipments are estimated to be 8.1 million units in 2023, a year-on-year decrease of 83%。However, driven by Meta's Quest 3 and Apple's Vision Pro headset, AR VR headset shipments will usher in significant growth in 2024, with an estimated year-on-year increase of 464%。Opportunities and challenges coexist, and along with the challenges, there are more new opportunities. On this road, some people choose to seek new vitality in dormancy, and some people bravely advance and take advantage of the momentum. It is undeniable that with the upgrading of XR hardware technology and software ecosystem, the virtual reality experience will be more immersive. Technologies such as gesture recognition and eye tracking have also been gradually improved, which will bring more possibilities to the industry. With the Apple Vision Pro on sale imminent, and many companies gearing up for the launch of the Vision Pro competition, this year's XR track is bound to be lively.