Apple’s Vision Pro mixed reality headset, announced at WWDC earlier this month, is still a long way from launch: the company has only said it will be available in the US sometime in 2024, with unnamed countries to follow later that year. . But it looks like the first hardware element of the Vision Pro launch could appear as soon as this fall.
According to the prolific and widely respected analyst Ming Chi Kuo, the iPhone 15, slated for launch in fall 2023, is expected to feature an improved ultra-wideband (UWB) chip designed to provide seamless integration with Vision Pro. Apple introduced the U1 chip in 2019 with the iPhone 11 and has subsequently included it in all iPhone models since, as well as the Apple Watch Series 6, 7 and 8, and the Ultra.
“The ecosystem is one of the key success factors for Vision Pro, including integration with other Apple hardware products,” says Kuo. The iPhone 15, therefore, “will likely see a spec upgrade from UWB, with the production process moving from 16nm to the more advanced 7nm, allowing for improved performance or reduced power consumption for nearby interactions.
That might sound a bit odd since the iPhone 15 will hit stores with at least three months of 2023 left, and the headset is unlikely to appear until at least halfway through the 15’s lifecycle. But Apple will need that its current-gen products work well with Vision Pro from day one, and the improved UWB chip will likely bring additional benefits beyond helmet integration: more accurate AirTag tracking, for example, or lower power consumption scaled down.
It might also be tempting to try to derive some clues from this prediction as to the Vision Pro launch schedule; if nothing else, it strongly suggests that Apple expects the headset to land before the iPhone 16 arrives in September 2024, and probably quite a while before that. But the consensus was already that Apple would try to release Vision Pro next spring, so that’s not really new information. (And in any case, delays can always affect an entirely new product line, as has happened to Vision Pro over the past few years. Even if Apple plans launch in the spring, the helmet may end up being pushed back for reasons beyond its control.)
Kuo adds that a new Vision-oriented upgrade will appear on the iPhone 16 in late 2024, with an upgrade to Wi-Fi 7.
