The Apple Vision Pro finally became available for pre-order on Friday last week, and while the first weekend did extremely well, to the point of being sold out, chances are that the demand may not continue to go up the same way. Here’s why.
According to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo’s blog, he estimates that Apple sold somewhere between 160,000 to 180,000 Vision Pro units during the pre-order weekend, which retail for $US3,500 a pop – no Australian release date just yet.
He goes on to say that, just like he predicted, the headset did, in fact, sell out right after pre-orders began. This extended the otherwise regular shipping time of the Vision Pro to around five to seven weeks within just a few hours.
At first, the exceptional demand and instant sold-out seemed impressive, and the hope was that the shipping time would shorten shortly. However, when the shipping time saw no changes in even 48 hours, it became slightly concerning because that implied that the demand might go down as a result when the headset becomes available to pre-order again.
According to Kuo, some media reports say that one of the supply chain partners, Luxshare, will likely work overtime during the Lunar New Year to meet the demand. He also shares that Luxshare has been working overtime anyway since mass production started because Vision Pro’s production efficiency hasn’t been the best.
Kuo ends by roughly predicting that selling around 500,000 units for the headset should be pretty achievable. But looking at the shipping time problem, we cannot be too sure about this prediction anymore. He adds that the Vision Pro being sold out should not be confused with the product being mainstream. With a user base of over 1.2 billion users, even if 0.007% of users pre-order the headset, it will be sold out; it is still quite a niche (and expensive) product.