Apple increased the prices of many of its products, including the Vision Pro headset, which now starts at $3700.
Apple Vision Pro (M5) price hikes are as follows:
- 256 GB: $3499 –> $3699 ($200 increase)
- 512 GB: $3699 –> $3899 ($200 increase)
- 1TB: $3899 –> $4199 ($300 increase)
These are price hikes on what was already an incredibly expensive headset. We once hoped that the more affordable Vision headsets would have lowered the entry price of visionOS, but instead we’re in a very dark timeline where the cost keeps going up.
Apple also raised similar prices for its Macs, iPads and HomePod speakers.
No, Apple isn’t canceling the Vision headset line permanently — here’s what’s happening
Several reports this year suggested that Apple, and specifically its incoming CEO John Dernes, was canceling the Vision headset line entirely. But that is not the only truth.
Outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook blamed the price hikes on the global memory crisis, which he told the Wall Street Journal was the most he had ever seen in his 40 years in the technology industry.
In case you are not familiar with the situation: the enormous demand for server-side inference of AI frontier models exceeds the global supply capacity of RAM chips, leading to a massive increase in their price.
A similar situation is occurring for storage as agentic AI systems are generating and storing data at an unprecedented rate.
Increases price of Meta Quest 3 & Quest 3S
Meta is raising the price of the Quest 3 by $600 and the Quest 3S by $350, citing the global memory chip crisis that has seen other tech prices rise.
Apple is far from the only tech company to raise its prices due to the crisis, and in fact has been one of the main stocks so far.
Sony has raised the price of its PlayStation 5 consoles several times in the past year, while Microsoft has done the same for the Xbox, and Meta increased the price of the Quest 3 and Quest 3S in April.
Earlier this week, Valve opened pre-orders for its hotly anticipated Steam Machine console PC and announced a poorly received $1050 starting price, which it says is driven by a memory crunch. Estimates suggest that would have come in about $750 under original component costs.
Valve to “Review” Steam Frame Shipping Schedule & Price
Valve says it has to “reconsider” its “exact shipping schedule and pricing” for the Steam Frame and Steam Engine amid the global recall shortage.
Valve is expected to release its Steam Frame headset in the next few weeks, which it recently confirmed will launch “this summer,” and it will also be affected by the crisis.
When revealing the Steam framework in November, Valve said it “aims” to sell UploadVR for less than the $1000 index full-kit, but it’s unclear if the company can hit that goal yet.
When will this end!?
Unfortunately, the situation will get worse before it gets better.
As advanced AI agents that run in loops of minutes or even hours become more efficient and therefore more widely deployed, the industry’s memory requirements increase exponentially.
Memory manufacturers such as SK Hynix and Micron are working urgently to ramp up production, but this will take years, and at this point demand will significantly outstrip supply.
Therefore, we may continue to see consumer technology prices rise in 2027, and if that happens, we won’t see relief until 2028 at the earliest. Expect this to affect Meta’s next headset and new entrants to the standalone XR market for the next couple of years.
The age of low-cost consumer hardware is over. At least for now.
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