Apple Estimated to Have Sold 180,000 Vision Pro Headsets — Mostly to Early Adopters
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Despite the high asking price of Apple’s new Vision Pro headset, it appears that the company has no problem quickly selling out of launch day inventory; delivery times moved into April less than 30 minutes after pre-orders opened early on Friday morning.
While there’s no word from Apple on how many Vision Pro headsets have actually been sold, well-known analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has an estimate for us. In a post on Medium, Kuo suggests that those pre-order numbers were somewhere between 160,000 and 180,000 units.
To put that in perspective, Kuo shared earlier this month that he believed Apple was only producing 60,000 to 80,000 units of the headset for the initial February 2 release. With some portion of those reserved to be sold in Apple Stores on launch day, it’s no surprise that Apple quickly sold out of its pre-order inventory.
Of course, that assumes that Kuo’s numbers are accurate, and there’s no guarantee that this is the case; they appear to be little more than educated guesses based on Kuo’s experience with the technology market in general — and Apple in particular.
Specifically, Kuo says he came up with his estimate “based on pre-order inventory and shipping time,” which was likely predicated on his original estimate of 60,000 to 80,000 launch units. However, he may also be assuming that every launch unit was available for pre-order, which we know can’t be the case if Apple expects to have any to sell in stores next Friday.
This means that while there’s no doubt that the pre-order stock of the Vision Pro sold very quickly, Kuo’s estimate may be on the high side. There are simply too many variables and unknowns here to come up with anything more than a guess.
Plus, while Kuo said that “all models” appear to have sold out, based on the extended shipping times, The Information’s Wayne Ma indicated that only “some” deliveries had been pushed to April, and demand is “still unclear.”
Some models of the headset, such as the more expensive 1 terabyte version, are still available for pickup on Feb. 2 launch day at certain Apple retail stores in the U.S. Other models show ship times of as early as Feb. 19, according to Apple’s website.
Wayne Ma, The Information
Ma also made the interesting observation that the shipping delays may result from the accessories rather than the headset itself. For example, each headset is packaged and shipped with a custom Light Seal based on measurements collected from a facial scan. Last week, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said that there are “more than 25 shapes and sizes of light seals,” and the wide variety of the shapes and sizes of people’s heads and faces would make it difficult for Apple to predict stock levels for those.
Since there’s no way to see shipping times until after you’ve performed a face scan, Apple’s website seemingly only shows you the availability of the headset with a Light Seal that matches your particular face. This seems to match my experience, where the Vision Pro shows differing availabilities depending on whose face I scan, ranging from ship dates in April for all models to higher-capacity versions available for February 5 in-store pickup and shipping in early March.
As Ma notes, it will be interesting to see how quickly the Apple Vision Pro hits the magic one million mark, although it’s doubtful it will get there as fast as Apple’s other products.
The real test will be to see how quickly the Vision Pro reaches 1 million orders. The Apple Watch hit that number in its first day, while the iPad took 28 days. The iPhone took 74 days to reach it.
Wayne Ma, The Information
For one thing, Kuo indicates that demand already seems to be leveling off compared to what typically happens during iPhone pre-order season. This suggests that most pre-orders were made by early adopters — “core fans and heavy users” — while others take a more cautious wait-and-see approach.
Popular iPhone models also sell out immediately upon pre-order, and shipping times typically increase to several weeks within hours. However, unlike Vision Pro, 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.
Ming-Chi Kuo
Nevertheless, Kuo says that Apple’s supply chain partners are working frantically to keep up with the demand so far, including having staff working overtime during the Lunar New Year due to “better than expected demand for Vision Pro.” However, Kuo also notes that the primary supplier, Luxshare, is still struggling to improve its production efficiency.
