The Apple Vision Pro promises to leave the best VR headsets in the dust and build a new product category: spatial computing. But just how big will this new device be, especially considering its starting price of $3,500?

Analyst firm Canalys has released a new report with estimates of Vision Pro shipments. While this is tiny compared to the iPhone, it represents 15% of the total MacBook installed base.

"With the Vision Pro, Apple has once again shown that late market entry is no barrier to success, and Apple will own yet another category," says the report.

According to Canalys analysts Jason Low and Nicole Peng, the Vision Pro will start slow, shipping 350,000 units in its first year, but will surpass 10 million units in its fourth and fifth years. In contrast, the Apple Watch and iPad have reached 20 million and 40 million units, respectively, by the fifth year.

To reach these numbers, Apple will need to lower the price of the Vision Pro as production expands and components become cheaper, and there are reports that Apple will release a cheaper AR/VR headset with fewer features within the next couple of years.

For now, Apple needs to convince early adopters that the innovation of the Vision Pro is worth the high entry price. And they each feature some pretty cutting-edge technology, including dual micro OLED lenses with 4K+ resolution, advanced eye tracking and hand tracking, and a powerful M2 chip and new R1 chip for real-time processing.

Apple is also betting big in several areas with Vision Pro, including immersive video playback and 3D photo and video capture. It also allows users to make FaceTime calls with a digital persona avatar, extend the MacBook display to run multiple applications side-by-side to increase productivity, and take advantage of a new wave of augmented reality applications.

However, the Vision Pro has several obstacles besides its high price, including complaints that it is too heavy to wear for long periods of time and its relatively short battery life of two hours. Then there is the social awkwardness of being the one wearing the headset in front of family and friends.

I had a chance to go hands-on with the Apple Vision Pro and it was a very impressive demo, but as one analyst recently told me, the success of this new platform will largely depend on the quantity and quality of third-party apps.

"The success of this platform is entirely up to the software developers," said Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies. If the software community doesn't embrace this platform, the category will go nowhere for Apple." But that's why it's so important to get a very good V1 product into their hands."