A customer wearing the Apple Vision Pro on July 12, 2024 in Paris, France.Kristy Sparow/Getty Images/AppleA long-running approach for Apple is “best, not first.”
Outgoing CEO Tim Cook confirmed it in a 2024 interview: “We’re perfectly fine with not being first,”
he told the Wall Street Journal. “As it turns out, it takes a while to get it really great.”
That approach worked wonderfully for the Apple Watch, which arrived in 2015, a year or two after the first Android-based smartwatches hit the market. It now rakes in $17 billion per year and commands the largest share of the market globally.
Why not glasses, then? A
new Bloomberg report says that the company’s long-awaited Meta Ray-Bans killer (codename: N50) won’t arrive by the end of this year, but the next, as it tinkers on a product aimed at a bigger opportunity.
If that sounds like the Apple Watch, which now outsells every watchmaker (analog or digital) on the planet, you’re right on the money, honey.
“The idea is to compete with products sold between roughly $200 and $500, a segment that includes EssilorLuxottica SA (Ray-Ban, Oakley, Persol, Oliver Peoples and Chanel), Safilo Group SpA (Tommy Hilfiger and Hugo Boss) and Warby Parker,” the report reads.
It would be a big step up for Apple. The eyewear market is believed to be worth about $200 billion—several multiples bigger than wristwear. The question is whether Apple can get its affairs in order fast enough to keep Meta’s own ambitions in check.
In the long term, Apple reportedly believes the specs could become a health device, not unlike—yep!—its watch, which has several FDA-cleared features.
For now, though, Apple simply needs to convince glasses wearers that its goods are a fashionably worthy addition to the collection. Watch this space.
—AN