Apple may not start the mass production of its AR/VR headset until the end of 2022, which could potentially delay its release to early 2023. Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo made this claim in his latest investor’s note.

The analyst believes Apple is delaying mass production because it wants the “complete software, ecosystem, and services” ready for its VR headset before launching it to the public. The company also has much higher design requirements than competitor products leading to production complexities.

He also added that Apple has the “best industrial design solutions” for an AR/VR headset despite the complexities involved.

The AR/MR HMD requires much more industrial design requirements than smartphones because the comfort of wearing them involves so many design details. Therefore, we believe Apple continues to test the best industrial design solutions so far.

The key to the success of the HMD lies in the software, ecosystem, and service. We believe that Apple is positioning its HMD for various applications, not just gaming applications, so the challenge of building software/ecosystem/services is significantly higher than current products/competitors.

It was previously believed that Apple would launch its AR/VR headset in Q2 2022, but that timeline seems to have changed once again.

A detailed report from earlier this year claimed Apple’s AR headset could feature dual-8K displays and cameras inside the eye-flap to track eye movements. Outside, the headset will have more than a dozen cameras. All these cameras, on the outside and inside, will work incoherence to ‘pass’ video of the real world through the visor and display it to the user, creating a mixed reality effect.

Another report claimed that Apple’s first AR headset would be heavy and expensive. This will be followed by the launch of a sleeker pair of Apple Glasses a year later.