Market and supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has a long history of reporting on the details of Apple’s supply chain, has a new report on Medium about Apple Vision Pro. There are many details of questionable providence, but they all paint a picture of a very low-volume product that won’t transition into a popular product line, generating millions in sales per year, for quite a long time.
According to Kuo, initial demand was higher than expected but has slowed significantly. The headset, which is currently only available in the United States, is only expected to sell 200,000 to 250,000 units this year. That’s an increase of about 50,000 from Apple’s previous internal estimates, according to Kuo, but it’s still a very niche product for Apple, which sells more than 200 million iPhones per year.
Kuo notes that some of the small capacity suppliers of Vision Pro parts have increased their capacity from 500,000 to 600,000 units to 700,000 to 800,000 units per year. Ability does not equate to the actual number of parts that will be ordered or produced by Apple, but it does indicate Apple’s ability to manufacture more Vision Pro headsets than will be needed for the US market alone. Kuo believes Apple will start selling the headset in other markets before WWDC in June.
The return rate, according to Kuo, is less than 1 percent, which seems pretty good for such a new and limited-use product. According to its survey of the repair/refurbishment production line, about 20-30% of these returns are due to customers not knowing how to configure Vision Pro, which is surely a number Apple would like to reduce. Ease of use and out-of-the-box setup is one of Apple’s trademark features. So it’s surprising to see so many people experiencing issues, even though this still represents a very small number of users.
Kuo says Apple has not yet started work on the successor to the Vision Pro (which is expected to consist of two units: a simpler, lower-cost model and another high-end “Pro” model). A new model is expected to enter production in late 2025 or early 2026, but this model is expected to have very similar specifications to the current version. Instead, it focuses on improving production efficiency and costs, not changing the user experience.
Apple is gathering feedback from users and developers to inform the future Vision product roadmap, but Kuo says a new product with a significantly changed user experience likely won’t enter mass production until 2027. Regarding current model, global shipping forecasts have increased from around half a million units to 650-700,000 units, but this is still a niche product for Apple and a fraction of the volume sold by its competitor Meta with its Quest headsets (estimated between 5 and 10 million per year).
So if you’re hoping to buy an “Apple Vision Air” for a price closer to $1,499, you’re going to be waiting a while, at least according to Kuo.
