The Vision Pro’s Global Launch Won’t Change Its Niche Status
Credit: Apple Vision Pro demo presentation in Wangfujing Beijing store [Apple]
Toggle Dark Mode
Apple’s Vision Pro is set to launch in five new countries tomorrow, but the international expansion isn’t expected to significantly boost sales, which have gotten off to a poorer start in the US than many analysts hoped.
Following years of anticipation, Apple launched the Vision Pro in February with no shortage of fanfare. However, it may be fair to say that some folks were expecting too much. After all, this was the headset that many hoped would usher in the next generation of computing, and while Apple is using it to define a new “Spatial Computing” paradigm, it’s also just the first step in what will undoubtedly be a longer journey.
While there’s no reliable word on how many Vision Pro units Apple expected to sell, supply chain analysts believed it was preparing as many as 800,000 units for 2024. Apple reportedly slashed its orders in half at some point, but there’s some uncertainty about when it made that call. The Financial Times reported last summer that it was aiming for only 400,000 units, but Ming-Chi Kuo said it only made that call in April while also cancelling plans for a new model in 2025.
Regardless of when it happened, it sounds like the analysts, not Apple, are off track with their predictions. As far back as three years ago, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman predicted that Apple’s first headset would be a niche product, with the company only expecting to sell one headset per day in each of its retail stores, or about 180,000 units in the first year.
While a lot has changed since early 2021, 400,000 units would still beat that rather modest prediction. The Vision Pro isn’t an iPhone, nor was it ever intended to be — at least not at this stage of the game.
A new Bloomberg report today seemingly confirms this with some numbers from IDC. While analysts estimate the Vision Pro failed to reach 100,000 units in its first quarter and “made no tangible improvement to Apple’s quarterly earnings after its debut,” the international rollout should at least maintain the inertia of sales to help offset the slump in the US.
The $3,500 Vision Pro mixed-reality headset has yet to sell 100,000 units in a quarter since its launch in the US in February, and it faces a 75% drop in domestic sales in the current quarter, according to market tracker IDC.Vlad Savov, Bloomberg
After all, considering the cost and excitement around the Vision Pro, it’s fair to say most people in the US who wanted one have already purchased it. IDC estimates that Apple sold nearly 92,000 units in the first quarter, plus another 80,000 in the US in Q2 2024 and 7,200 in China, Japan, and Singapore, where the headset went up for preorder in mid-June and launched at the end of the month.
However, US sales are expected to plummet to under 20,000 in Q3 and around 12,000 in Q4. If IDC’s estimates are correct, this would translate to annual sales of around 200,000 units in the US.
Meanwhile, continued sales in Asia plus tomorrow’s addition of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the UK will help push the overall sales to around 400,000, matching the estimates we’ve been hearing from Apple’s supply chain since just after the headset debuted in June 2023. However, these estimates also assume there will be enough local content to appeal to customers in those countries.
The Vision Pro’s success, regardless of its price, will ultimately depend on the available content. As Apple expands the product to international markets, it’s crucial that local content is also made available.Francisco Jeronimo, vice president at IDC
Although the Vision Pro remains a niche product, it’s unlikely Apple ever expected it to be more than that. The Vision Pro was Apple putting its best foot forward with a $3,500 headset that helped us dream about everything Spatial Computing could do. However, Apple has learned not to waste our time with “imaginary futuristic bullshit,” so it created an actual product that folks could experience for themselves, even if only as part of an in-store demo.
More significantly, the Vision Pro is the first bold step into what will undoubtedly become an entire product family. We’ve known for some time that Apple never intended it to be only one class of device, and the “Pro” in Vision Pro makes that obvious. Every Apple “Pro” hardware product has a non-pro counterpart, and multiple sources reveal Apple is already hard at work on a more affordable headset that would effectively be the “Vision” or “Vision Air” to the Vision Pro.
For what it’s worth, IDC predicts that a more affordable version of the headset, likely coming in at around half the price of the Vision Pro, would “rekindle interest in 2025,” more than doubling sales and hitting nearly 350,000 units in Q4 2025. Most other analysts agree with that sentiment, but that also doesn’t require a lot of clairvoyance. After all, the Vision Pro is an excellent and exciting product; the most significant obstacle keeping it from appealing to a broader audience is that it’s also a very expensive one.
