Apple’s Vision Pro is a $30 Trillion Product

In 2014, I calculated that Apple’s equity value would be $3 trillion, which it is today. Apple’s platforms have created even more equity value for its developers, who generated over $1.1 trillion in revenue in 2022. Using the same analysis, method, and theory, that I used in 2014, we can analyze the equity value creation potential of the Vision Pro today. 

In short: the Vision Pro will be one of the most successful products in history measured by revenue, profits, customer satisfaction, and equity value creation for Apple and its developers. The reason why is simple: because it will get more customer jobs done faster, more accurately, and yes, less expensively than any product in history. 

Equity value can be created in only two ways: (i) growth or (ii) financial engineering (i.e. the use of debt, cost cutting, stock trading, or arbitrage). 

All growth that creates equity value results from helping people get jobs done better, in other words, from helping them solve real problems, which are known today as Jobs-to-be-Done or JTBDs. 

As humans, we evolved to survive and reproduce on a planet flying 20 miles per second around a giant nuclear reactor called the Sun. In our physical reality, there are categories of JTBDs: food, shelter, clothing, health, education, transportation, energy, and leisure. All categories of JTBDs require optimization, planning, design, engineering, assessment, analysis, maintenance, revision, and investment. 

And these JTBDs all exist in reality in three dimensions. The Vision Pro will be a success because a 3D platform and interface is a much faster and more accurate way to get these jobs done. It is hard to imagine this, in part, because we have been locked in 2D interfaces for decades. But developers, will create applications that unlock human potential with the Vision Pro because humans and our JTBDs are three dimensional. We evolved and live in a three dimensional physical reality. 

But we also live in a virtual world: television, movies, games, social networks, books, media, art, music, finance, information, and the internet all exist today in digital form as 1s and 0s. These categories of JTBDs exist in the digital (virtual) world and they can be two, three and even multidimensional (for example analyzing business or medical data that includes multiple variables that change over time). 

So what is the size of the market for the Vision Pro? Meta has sold 20 million Quests at about $500 each. Using the traditional definition of a market, this a tiny market for Apple, which has about $400 billion in revenue. But to define a market using by calculating (i) the products sold times (ii) the price of the products is a classic investment mistake because customers are not buying products, they are hiring them to get jobs done at a price they are willing to pay. 

For example, we all switched from records to cassettes to CDs to iPods to streaming apps because the new products got the job of “creating a mood with music” done faster and more accurately. This is true in any consumer, business or medical market throughout history: the customer’s JTBD is stable, but the products and technologies will change. The JTBD is the true market. 

The Vision Pro’s market is extremely large because it includes customers’ willingness to pay to get expensive and time-consuming jobs done better. It will help more people make more money by reducing the total cost of getting jobs done in the physical world today. And it will create new opportunities to make money in the virtual world, creating human-centric virtual 3D spaces that enable us to create, collaborate and hopefully communicate in much better ways than we do today.

The equity value creation potential of the Vision Pro for Apple and its developers is tens of trillions of dollars. 

The future is looking very bright.