It may seem like a niche product, but Apple has big plans for its upcoming Vision Pro headset. In fact, Apple reportedly believes that augmented reality will one day replace the iPhone, which is obviously an enormous ask considering the company shipped over 225 million phones in 2022.

Even the most optimistic Apple fan would not predict that the $3,500 Vision Pro will eat into that, but now a report from China claims to offer insight into what the company is expecting from its first AR headset.

In a report flagged by Revegnus on X, Interface News claims that Apple aims to ship 400,000 units at launch, 1 million units throughout 2024, and 10 million units by the end of 2026.

However, this report contradicts an earlier report in the Financial Times, which suggested that Apple had cut its order from 1 million units to 400,000 units for all of 2024. It is the same as the first two figures cited, but in an order that reveals a far less optimistic picture of where Apple is headed.

Even assuming that the 1 million units in 2024 is accurate, reaching 10 million in three years seems unreasonable. Yes, Meta celebrated sales of about 20 million Quest 2 headsets in March, but that is a $400 product and only 11.5% of the Vision Pro's MSRP.

Of course, Apple is rumored to be coming out with a cheaper headset in 2025. It's also hard to overestimate the power of Apple's brand to create product categories out of nowhere, as evidenced by how AirPods went from social media laughingstock to Apple's second best-selling product in just two years.

Elsewhere, the report claims that Apple will pay $1,700 for parts and manufacturing for the first generation Vision Pro, which is a far cry from the $1,509 we heard in June.

Intuitively, one might resent the prospect of Apple charging consumers more than twice the cost of raw materials, but that is not entirely fair. Not only are there a variety of associated costs in manufacturing and distribution (think assembly, distribution, and even marketing), but this is a product that Apple has spent years researching and developing and has a patent trail. Yet it took Meta less than four months to reduce the price of the Meta Quest Pro headset by a third. It will be interesting to see how long Apple thinks it can maintain the $3,500 price tag once it starts gathering dust in stores.