CEO Tim Cook confirms Apple Vision Pro to be available in China in 2024. According to official media, Tim Cook Made the announcement on Sunday. This implies that Apple Vision Pro will join the mainland China market.
Cook announced the headset’s China launch plan in answer to a media inquiry on the sidelines of the China Development Forum in Beijing, CCTV Finance claimed on its Weibo social account.
Apple would continue to increase research and development investment in China, he was reported as saying.
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Recently, a report stated that Apple Vision Pro could soon be launched in numerous regions. The Cupertino-based tech giant presented its first mixed reality (supporting both augmented reality and virtual reality) headset during Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in 2023. It later went on sale in the US in 2024. While there have been stories suggesting the headset’s rollout to other locations, the business has not announced any such plans yet. But now, a report has unearthed clues about which countries could be the first to obtain the Vision Pro hidden within the device’s operating system’s protocols.
The strings of codes in VisionOS, where the hints for the extension of the Apple Vision Pro were initially found by MacRumors. The virtual keyboard for the device presently only supports the English (US) language. However, the report claims that the codes show that support for 12 more languages would be added.
These 12 languages include:
- Cantonese – Traditional
- Chinese – Simplified
- English (Australia)
- English (Canada)
- English (Japan)
- English (Singapore)
- English (UK)
- French (Canada)
- French (France)
- German (Germany)
- Japanese
- Korean
Apple hasn’t disclosed the precise date of Vision Pro to other countries, releases, or even the countries in which it will be available. Nonetheless, since the inclusion of the language also indicates the region, this suggests that China, Australia, Canada, Japan, Singapore, the UK, France, and Germany may become the first to see the headset being offered in their nations. Notably, India is not listed in the list.
Simplified Chinese may also indicate that the business is expanding into mainland China, where Apple has a strong presence thanks to the iPhone. Granted, traditional Chinese script is used in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, while simplified Chinese is also widely used in Malaysia and Singapore.
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Unlike its biggest rival Meta, which is based in the US, Quest 3 is not available for purchase in China’s mainland. According to a rumor from earlier this year, negotiations between Meta and the massive Chinese IT company Tencent had reached a standstill, ostensibly ending prospects for a Meta hardware launch in China.
However, ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, may soon introduce a rival to Vision Pro in China. It has been rumored that the business has abandoned its planned Pico 5 headset from XR subsidiary Pico Interactive in favor of a more direct rival to Vision Pro.
According to a report by independent tech analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple may be increasing the manufacturing of Vision Pro, as Kuo anticipates the company will introduce the product in other markets prior to this year’s WWDC, which is typically held in the first week of June.