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July 3, 2023 – Originally published on Linkedin here
Emerging Technologies can play a part in unlocking a Latent Market.
They do so by:
Making the impossible possible.
Making the expensive affordable.
VR and AR make it possible to hallucinate whenever you want to.
Unlike the biological version digital hallucinations can be can be controlled and guided.
You can take a trip to Barcelona or Budapest from your home and Try Before You Fly.
You can visit museums such as the Natural History Museum in London.
Imagine you are Spider-Man: Far From Home whilst in your home.
..or offer pain relief.
Is Apple hallucinating, or is their Vision better than ours?
What do they see that we don’t?
Can they see a Latent Market the Vision Pro will unlock?
Perhaps the Vision Pro is designed to lockout their greatest adversary (tip not Microsoft)?
Did they simply miss a short lived market?
Betting against Apple is usually a bad idea.
Not only have they made the most successful consumer product ever.
Their established pattern is:
V1 seems like a toy
V3 category defining monster
Yet Latent Market Analysis says that won’t happen this time.
Let’s compare against the iPhone just for fun.
There was a massive smartphone shaped Latent Market waiting to be captured.
In 2004 early adopters were already using:
Mobile internet
Email
Mobile camera
Maps
Mobile Music
Video calling over 3G
I had a Sony Ericsson P900, which could do all of those things.
Bear in mind that if this phone were a person it would now be old enough to vote.
Blackberrys were super popular and Nokia had capable devices.
However the majority were locked out of the benefit by:
Horrible interface and interaction design
Horrible displays, tiny, dim, reflective plastic screens that were impossible to read in the sun
Horrible keyboards made typing a nightmare
Horrible internet access (WAP)
Horrible file exchange to load mp3s
Yet early adopters were were fighting their way through these problems in order to:
Work from anywhere
Find our way
Listen to music
Share photos
Communicate
The early majority didn’t have the patience, eyesight or finger dexterity to take part but they wanted to.
Apple could have been made for the job.
A company with deep expertise in both tech hardware, interface design and marketing.
Though It still took two attempts to get it right.
Who remembers the first Apple phone, no not the first iPhone.
I mean the Motorola ROKR E1.
No, me neither.
The iPhone learned from Apple’s previous mistakes. It had:
A super intuitive interface
A massive screen
A great software keyboard that made typing possible
Full internet access (even if it was slow via 2g and edge)
iTunes which made getting music onto your device easy
Good marketing
Slam dunk!
The first iPhone launched with iTunes and the App Store was just around the corner.
When it launched it opened the door to becoming the remote control for everything.
Back to the Apple Vision Pro.
Are we in an iPhone situation?
Early adopters are using AR/VR for:
The early majority are locked out by:
Money:
Hardware and subscription costs are high (£2500 in the Vision Pros case)
Mental capacity:
A new interface to learn, new paradigm to adopt.
Physically:
Headsets are heavy and uncomfortable and obscure our peripheral vision which makes us feel uncomfortable.
And…
Social norms:
We want each other to be present. We are hard wired to want to see each others faces.
Google glass illustrated some of the issues.
Habit:
We have a lot of muscle memory with other devices and those devices address the same fundamental needs.
Significance:
Do digitally hallucinations help you meet your fundamental needs or alienate you from the world?
And…
Confidence:
Is the experience worth it?
How long before the headset is obsolete?
How good is the available content?
Awareness:
Do you know the range of things you can do in VR/AR?
How aware is your Mum, Dad, brother or sister?
At the moment I can’t see the benefit outweighing the barriers to participation for the majority.
I also can’t see Apple being able to address the fundamental issues with the headset form factor.
Strapping a computer to your face is simply uncomfortable.
There is a Latent Market for spatial computing but I don’t think a headset will unlock it.
The additional value doesn’t seem great enough to counteract the pain.
Could the Vision Pro be about something else?
Meta and Apple are not friends.
Meta is spending the GDP of a small country trying to find a direct route to consumer.
The rebrand, the Meta Quest and Horizon Worlds are all attempts to break out of the iPhone screen.
Until the Vision Pro launched the Meta Quest was a best in class device.
Now it looks like the cheap alternative.
Who will developers want to create apps for?
So perhaps the Vision Pro is a way to keep Meta in check?
If so it seems an expensive defence mechanism especially when Meta’s headset doesn’t have a viable Latent Market either.
Meta has sold more than 20 million headsets but people aren’t using them.
They were bought as Christmas presents which are now languishing in a cupboard somewhere or for sale via Backmarket and Ebay.
Perhaps the answer is simpler still.
Apple approved the Vision Pro during Covid.
At that time we were all desperate to see more of each other, even if we had to hallucinate to do it.
Perhaps Apple took aim at a short lived market and missed the mark?
Over to you
What’s your take on the Apple Vision Pro?
Is there a Latent Market for AR/VR?
Do you know anyone who spends more than two hours a day or more than 20 minutes every day in VR/AR?
If you do let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear what they are doing with that time.
Update as of 3rd March 2024
My Latent Market analysis predicted that Apple's Vision Pro VR/AR head set would be failure. This short presentation details why.
The majority of my predictions seem to have been bourn out at this point. Version one of the Vision Pro is a flop.
On the 15th of February Apple Stores were crowded with dissatisfied customers returning their headsets before the 14 day return period expired.
One user on Twitter (I can’t get used to calling it a letter) made most of the points my Latent Market Analysis pointed to in his farewell message https://twitter.com/farzyness/status/1757084130565623954?s=20.
Perhaps version two or three will be interesting if we get to see them. Unless something material changes however I’d say this is a niche product.
With the abandonment of project Titian, Apple’s self driving car this feels like a directional moment for the technology giant.
I am excited to see what their new found focus on AI will produce. I know this is where I would focus if I were Apple. They own the device in most people’s pockets.
AI is going to change the way we live and one of the most consequential ways we encounter it will be via our smartphones.
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