At the beginning of the year, reports began circulating that Apple had stopped most of its marketing activities for the Vision Pro. There was talk of 95 percent lower budgets after the 2025 Christmas business also brought in hardly any customers. Now MacRumors claims to have learned of a far-reaching decision: Apple is giving up, sees no future in the Vision Pro and has already disbanded the teams – or, more precisely, divided them into other areas. This doesn’t affect the work on smart glasses, but it does affect the headset concept. M5 upgrade caused no demand
The hardware upgrade with M5 instead of M2 chip, which took place in October 2025, was probably just as spurned by customers as the first generation – although the processor, in contrast to price and weight, was not necessarily an aspect that had previously caused criticism. The test reports said that although there was now more computing power, there were still no sensible areas of application. This seems to be the same view at Apple, as the report states. The far above-average return rate was also seen internally as a sign that users didn’t really know what to do with the device.
AR remains one of the most important topics
However, the abandonment of the project and the redistribution of teams does not mean an end to Apple’s AR ambitions. Instead, the company is working intensively on smart glasses, which no longer require a monstrous device on the head. The “lighter, cheaper Vision Air” project was also canceled months ago in favor of compact glasses. The Vision Pro is likely to go down in Apple’s history as an impressive tech demo from which important insights were drawn for future products.
Special status of the vision team dissolved
Apple usually does not rely on pure iPhone, iPad, Watch or Mac departments, but rather on cross-project teams with different tasks. The Vision Pro made an exception, but now we have returned to the usual working methods. The device was said to be Tim Cook’s favorite project, even though he rarely got directly involved in hardware development – which is why the department enjoyed a special status. According to the report, some former employees are now working on Siri, others are working in the general hardware division or the Glasses project.
