iPhone 1 was limited but extremely useful at launch. People like me that bought on day 1 couldn’t get enough of it. Had an amazing unparalleled Web browser experience and email, an iPod replacement and Google Maps / Youtube in your pocket felt magical. Also got a Vision Pro on day one and used it just a handful of times. Use cases and value prop of AVP nebulous. Smartphones were a popular product category when iPhone launched in a way VR / AR headsets aren’t today.
I don't think VR is all that different from smartphones at the time of the iPhone launch. The Quest has sold over 20 million units. And at the time of the iPhone launch, a lot of people still had "camera phones" and "feature phones". Business users (like me) has Blackberry / Treo / or a few Windows devices. There were weird texting phones for teens that had keyboards, etc. But most people did not have a smartphone.
You are saying that sales, usage, range of use cases and types of audiences of VR headsets today is comparable to Smartphones (Blackberry Palm), Cell phones and personal music players in 2007? Those are the devices that iPhone improved upon and replaced. Most VR headsets stopped being used shortly after purchase and only a few games sub genres have signs of product-market fit
the first iPhone (2007) cost $499 and the second iPhone, iPhone 3g (2008), cost $199. while the 3g support and App Store helped, I think the much lower price led to volume increase from 1.39M to 11.63M YoY.
They actually cost the same the behind the scenes the difference was the subsidy was available by the time the 3G came out when it wasn’t available at lunch.
I have a Quest and have used other VR systems, the Vision Pro felt like a huge leap forward compared to those.
I walked away from the demo tempted. Not by what is available today, but by what I want to be available and what I want to create with it.