Apple Vision Pro to land in China in April or May

So far the Apple Vision Pro is confined to the US, but of course it's inevitable that it will eventually launch in other countries. And one of them will be China, according to a new report from local media.

The headset is going to become available over there in April at the earliest, or May at the latest. The information allegedly comes from unnamed "supply chain sources", so do take it with a pinch of salt. Not too much, though, for Apple CEO Tim Cook himself said the Vision Pro is coming "soon" to China at the release of the headset in New York earlier this month.

Confusingly, the headset may not be branded Vision Pro in China, but instead Apple could reuse the Reality brand due to an ongoing dispute over the Vision Pro trademark. Huawei applied for the Vision Pro trademark in China on May 16, 2019, and received a ten-year exclusive use period for it from November 28, 2021 to November 27, 2031.

The same source claims the headset's official certification for sale in China is almost completed - when that actually finishes, we'll know as the databases are public. An interesting tidbit is that the Vision Pro's bill of materials is estimated to be about $1,700 so right about half of its retail price.

Now for the bad news. Availability is said to be quite tight, especially for the first batch of units that will go on sale in China. Hopefully subsequent batches will contain more units, we'll have to wait and see.

Source (in Chinese)