It’s been just over two years since Apple shipped the Vision Pro. The $3,499 spatial computing headset launched to breathless reviews, long queues, and predictions that it would transform personal computing.

Two years later, the reality is more nuanced—and more interesting—than either the evangelists or sceptics predicted.

The Sales Picture

Apple doesn’t disclose Vision Pro unit sales. Analyst estimates from IDC and Counterpoint Research suggest roughly 800,000-1.2 million units sold globally through Q4 2025, with sales slowing significantly after the initial launch quarter.

For context, Apple sells roughly 50 million iPads per year. The Vision Pro is a niche product by Apple’s standards, and everyone—including Apple—knew it would be at this price point.

More telling than total sales is the usage pattern. Return rates for Vision Pro were reportedly around 25% in the first few months—unusually high for Apple hardware. Early buyers were curious but couldn’t find enough reason to keep a device that heavy and expensive as part of their daily routine.

Who Kept Theirs

The interesting question isn’t who bought a Vision Pro. It’s who’s still using one regularly two years later. Based on developer surveys, online community activity, and industry conversations, the active user base clusters into three groups.

Enterprise users. Companies that bought Vision Pro units for specific professional applications account for a disproportionate share of active usage. Architecture firms using it for design review. Medical device companies for 3D visualisation. Training departments for immersive simulation. These users don’t love the weight or the price, but they love the display quality and spatial interaction for professional tasks.

Creative professionals. Filmmakers, 3D designers, and spatial content creators form the second active cluster. For these users, the Vision Pro is both a creative tool and a display device for reviewing their own work. The quality of the micro-OLED displays remains unmatched in the consumer XR market.

Dedicated enthusiasts. A smaller group of technology enthusiasts and early adopters who use Vision Pro regularly for media consumption, productivity experiments, and spatial computing exploration. This group is vocal online but relatively small in absolute numbers.

Notably absent from the active user base: mainstream consumers. The promise of “replacing your TV” or “spatial productivity from anywhere” hasn’t resonated broadly enough to justify the price and ergonomic compromises.

What’s Working

The apps that drive sustained usage are more specialised than Apple probably anticipated.

Immersive video. Apple’s investments in spatial video capture (now available on iPhone 16 Pro) and immersive content are producing the strongest consumer use case. Watching spatial video of family events or nature documentaries in an immersive environment is genuinely compelling. But it’s a consumption experience, not the productivity revolution Apple’s marketing emphasised.

Design and visualisation. Professional 3D visualisation remains the strongest functional use case. Architects reviewing building models in spatial context, product designers examining prototypes at full scale, and medical professionals studying anatomical data in 3D all report genuine productivity benefits.

Virtual monitors. Using Vision Pro as a multi-monitor replacement for laptop-based work is popular among frequent travellers. The virtual workspace is convincing enough to replace physical monitors for focused work sessions, though few users want to wear the headset for more than 2-3 hours continuously.

What’s Not Working

App ecosystem depth. The visionOS App Store has roughly 2,500 native spatial apps—a fraction of the iOS ecosystem. Many major app developers haven’t invested in visionOS versions because the installed base doesn’t justify the development cost. This creates a chicken-and-egg problem.

Social experiences. Apple marketed the ability to use Vision Pro for FaceTime with spatial Personas. In practice, the Persona feature—a digital avatar generated from a face scan—remains uncanny and slightly uncomfortable. People prefer standard video calls.

Comfort for extended use. Despite iterative improvements to the head strap and a slight weight reduction with the Solo Knit Band, the Vision Pro remains too heavy for all-day wear. Most users report 90-120 minutes as their comfortable limit.

What This Tells Us About Spatial Computing

The Vision Pro experience suggests spatial computing’s future is professional and specialised, not mass-market and general-purpose—at least at current price and comfort levels.

The Meta Quest 3 occupies a very different position: cheaper, lighter, more gaming-focused, and with a much larger installed base. But it also demonstrates that mass-market XR usage is dominated by entertainment and fitness, not productivity.

For the broader spatial computing industry, the lesson is that the hardware needs to get significantly lighter, cheaper, and more comfortable before mainstream adoption materialises. Apple reportedly has a lighter, cheaper Vision product in development for late 2026 or 2027. Meta continues iterating on Quest.

Companies working on spatial computing applications—whether enterprise training, medical visualisation, or design tools—should build for the professional user who has a specific problem that spatial computing solves, rather than the general consumer who might find it interesting.

That’s a smaller market than the vision Apple painted at WWDC 2023. But it’s a real market with real willingness to pay. And from there, the technology can grow into broader applications as hardware improves and prices decline.

The Vision Pro didn’t fail. But it didn’t change the world either. What it did was establish, conclusively, that spatial computing works—for specific people, doing specific things. That’s a reasonable foundation for what comes next.