The mainstream appeal is cloudy, and the current market for these interactive headsets is smaller than any the company has entered in the past decade.
Yet Apple has a proven playbook for entering new product categories with a more polished version, expanding the whole market in the process.
“You dum-dum! iPods, iPhones, even the MacBook Air, all solved real problems. Mixed-reality headsets solve nothing!” I hear you, which is why I bring up the Apple Watch.
Just watch the 2014 introduction of the wearable. It’s pretty clear Tim Cook and team didn’t know what people would use the device for, other than to tell time.
The Apple Watch shipped anyway. But it took about four generations to land on a genuinely worthwhile purpose: health and fitness.
The headset stands to benefit from this if-you-build-it-they-will-come approach.
