Apple Reportedly Sold Up to 180,000 Vision Pro Headsets Over the Weekend

Apple has sold between 160,000 and 180,000 units of its new Vision Pro headsets after opening pre-orders on Friday, January 19, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. The headset, which is priced at $3,499, quickly sold out and Kuo pointed out that shipping times for all models increased to five to seven weeks. However, the analyst believes that demand for the headset could have already peaked.

“The instant sold-out and extended shipping times seem positive at first, but a key concern emerged: shipping times remained unchanged 48 hours after pre-orders opened,” Kuo explained. Drawing a comparison with what happens with new iPhone pre-orders, Kuo added “that iPhone models usually continue to see a steady increase in shipping times 24 to 48 hours after pre-orders open, indicating that demand continues to grow even after the initial sold-out.

According to Kuo, shipping 500,000 units of its Vision Pro headset in 2024 “should not be challenging” for Apple. However, the analyst still sees the headset as a “very niche product” for a company with now over two billion active devices worldwide.

Apple’s Vision Pro headset will launch on February 2 in the US, and it’s expected to come to other markets later this year. This is the company’s first big product launch since the release of the Apple Watch back in 2015, and Apple expects to have over 1 million apps available on the Vision Pro at launch. That number includes iPad apps that can run unmodified on the headset.

However, the Vision Pro could face an unexpected “app gap” situation as big video platforms such as Netflix and YouTube have declined to release native apps for the Vision Pro and chose not to make their iPad apps available on the device. Spotify is another streaming service that won’t be releasing an app for the Vision Pro, and the company is reportedly still on the fence about making its iPad app available or not on the headset.

In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggested that a lot of developers will probably opt for a “wait and see” approach. “Developers saw the poor performance of Apple’s last three new App Stores — ones for TV, watches and iMessage — and don’t want to participate until they know if the Vision Pro version will be successful,” the reporter explained.