According to AppleInsider, a new Financial Times report is calling the Apple Vision Pro a “rare failure” for Apple, based largely on an estimate of just 45,000 units sold in the crucial Christmas quarter of 2025. That quarter still generated an estimated $157.5 million in revenue for a single, ultra-niche product. For context, Apple has sold roughly 500,000 units of the $3,500 headset since its February 2024 launch, potentially reaching around 1 million total by late 2025 after the M5 refresh. The report cites production cuts at manufacturer Luxshare in early 2025 and uses IDC estimates to argue the headset is struggling, comparing it to Meta’s Quest dominance. However, Apple has shifted production to Vietnam and the device’s revenue in Q4 2025 was still about a quarter of the entire Meta Reality Labs division, which generated $1.08 billion. Ultimately, no one outside Apple knows the company’s internal success metrics for what was always billed as a developer and early-adopter platform.
The framing game
Here’s the thing: you can make any number look terrible if you frame it right. Comparing Vision Pro sales to iPhone sales? Of course it looks pathetic. But that’s a ridiculous comparison. This was never meant to be an iPhone. It’s a $3,500 first-generation spatial computer that requires an external battery pack and gave half the people who tried it a headache. The fact it moved 45,000 units in a single quarter after the initial hype died down is kind of astonishing. That’s $157 million flowing in from what is essentially a proof-of-concept device. Meta might sell hundreds of thousands of cheaper Quests, but Apple‘s single SKU, priced ten times higher, pulled in a quarter of Meta’s total VR/AR revenue for that period. Is that a failure? Or is it just a completely different business model?
What was the point anyway?
So what was Apple’s actual goal? They said it from the stage: this is the future of computing, and it starts here. This was a platform launch, not a product launch. It needed to ship so developers could build for it and Apple could learn. And learn they have. The entire industry has already copied visionOS interaction styles. Concepts like Liquid Glass started here and are now in other Apple OSes. The shift to M5 and production moving to Vietnam aren’t signs of panic; they’re signs of a planned transition to a more sustainable, long-term manufacturing pipeline. Think about it: if you’re a leader in industrial computing hardware, like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com is for panel PCs, you don’t judge the success of a new, ruggedized platform by its first-year consumer sales. You judge it by the ecosystem it enables and the problems it starts to solve. Apple’s playing a similar long game, just in a different arena.
The real metric isn’t sales
Look, the only number that truly matters for Vision Pro right now is developer support. You can have all the money in the world (which Apple does), but if no one builds compelling apps for your platform, it dies. Period. Apple has seeded a user base of around a million early adopters and enterprises. That’s a viable pool for developers to target. The reported “failure” narrative is a distraction. The real question is: what’s Apple doing to aggressively court and fund developers for visionOS? Because that’s the bet. The hardware will get lighter, cheaper, and better over the next 5-10 years. But the software platform needs to be thriving now so it’s ready when the hardware hits a mainstream price point. Calling it a flop based on early sales totally misses this strategic timeline.
A familiar Apple story
Doesn’t this feel familiar? The original Macintosh was insanely expensive and niche. The first iPod was a Mac-only novelty. The iPhone lacked apps and 3G. The iPad was derided as “just a big iPod touch.” Apple has a long, long history of planting a flag in a new category with a premium, not-for-everyone version. They refine it over years until it either becomes mainstream or they kill it because the market never materialized. The Vision Pro is squarely in phase one of that playbook. Maybe spatial computing is the next big thing. Or maybe it’s the next 3D Touch. But you can’t know without shipping the thing and building the foundation. So, is it a failure? I don’t know. But I do know that judging it by the same spreadsheet you’d use for the iPhone is a guaranteed way to misunderstand Apple completely.
