Before Apple's Vision Pro hits the shelves, lower-priced rival Xreal claims it's near 200k shipments

cnbc.com:

BEIJING — Less than a year since augmented reality glasses startup Xreal started sales, the Alibaba-backed company is claiming shipments will soon reach 200,000 units.

Augmented reality (AR) technology allows digital images to be imposed over the real world.

It took the Chinese startup about four months to ship 100,000 units worldwide after a mass launch in late August 2022, co-founder Peng Jin told CNBC Thursday on the sidelines of Shanghai MWC.

«So you can do the math, how long it takes to do 200,000 units? It won't take that long,» he said, without specifying a date.

It's unclear whether the pace of sales has changed. In late May, Xreal said it had sold 150,000 products globally.

«Right now, 200%, 300% [growth], it should be the norm, it doesn't really mean much,» Jin said. «But I think it's very encouraging that people are accepting this new form factor, they are accepting this new experience.»

Xreal's Air glasses cost $379, about a tenth of the $3,500 that Apple plans to charge for its Vision Pro headset when it's set to reach consumers next year.

The two products operate on different technology and their capabilities vary.

But both attempt to replicate the physical screen time experience with a large, virtual screen. That kind of digital replication falls under the category of spatial computing.

«We do see spatial computing as the major technological trend in the next maybe two, three decades,» Jin said.

«I don't think the trick is in creating a whole bunch of original content so people can forget what they're doing and evolve into that.… For us, the content is already there.»

The Financial Times on Monday reported, citing sources, that Vision Pro suppliers were only projecting a few hundred thousand units for the