The Vision Pro data glasses launched relatively successfully in the USA. It is still unclear when it will be available in other countries, two well-known and accurate Apple experts mention possible dates.
Apple doesn't reveal any numbers, but the Vision Pro seems to have had a fairly successful start in the USA. The accurate analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote on Medium that 160,000 to 180,000 units were sold in the first week of pre-orders. That's more than twice as much as him had previously expected. However, Kuo sticks to his assumption that Apple will sell around 500,000 smart glasses by the end of the year. That's minuscule compared to the sales figures of the company's other devices, but Kuo writes that the Vision Pro is so far only a niche product.
Nevertheless, when introducing the data glasses at the start of the WWDC developer conference last June, Apple announced that it would be launching them in other countries later this year. The press release was not more specific. The usually well-informed Mark Gurman from “Bloomberg” wrote shortly afterwards that the Vision Pro would go on sale in the USA in early 2024, which he was correct. Canada and Great Britain could follow at the end of 2024, and Apple is discussing this. France, Germany, Austria, China, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea will probably have their turn a little later – just under a year from now.
“Not much later” than in the USA
But four weeks ago Gurman wrote that the market launch in other countries would probably take place “not much later” than in the USA. Apple should think about Great Britain, Canada and China. And when Germany? Ming-Chi Kuo can't say that either, but he doesn't limit the potential candidates to the countries mentioned by Gurman either.
Kuo expects the Vision Pro to be available internationally before the upcoming WWDC so that developers can prepare for it. That probably means May, as WWDC usually takes place in the first or second week of June. On the one hand, the glasses will initially only be available in the USA in order to make sales smooth, according to the analyst. On the other hand, Apple needs time to adapt the software for other countries.
Even then, the Apple Vision Pro will not be available in large quantities. Even if demand were correspondingly high, it would probably still be technically challenging to produce the Vision Pro in larger quantities. Kuo also recently assumed this. The main problems were high error rates with the MicroLEDs for the screens of data glasses, the “Financial Times” reported last summer.
