TD Cowen analyst Krish Sankar weighed in Friday with a research note laying out his forecast for sales, and pointing out some potential issues for the new Apple device.
Sankar thinks the first device will be in a related category called XR, for “extended reality,” which blends elements of the real world with virtual objects and experiences. He expects the first device to be priced at $3,000, and to initially appeal to early adopters and software developers. Sankar’s forecast is for sales in 2023 of between 500,000 and 1 million devices. If he’s right, that would imply a boost of well under 1% to annual revenue.
The Cowen analyst thinks Apple will follow up next year with a VR headset, which presumably would compete with market leader Meta Platform’s Quest headsets. He expects that device to be priced at $2,000, which is about twice the price of Meta’s high end Meta Quest Pro.