How much does it cost Apple to make a Vision Pro headset?

Apple’s new class of product, the Vision Pro headset, comes with an impressive price tag starting at $3,499. But how much does it cost the company to build one? This is a question that Omdia wanted to answer, so it compiled a Bill of Materials (BoM) and did some number crunching.

Breaking down the headset into 11 groups of components, the company found that the most expensive components by far were the two main micro-OLED displays. Manufactured by Sony Semiconductors, these cost Apple an estimated $456, accounting for 29.6% of the total BoM.

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Next on the list are the brains of the unit, two processors that handle the workload.

There’s an M2 chip acting as the main processor. This is the same chip that powered the 2022 MacBook Air and is tasked with running the VisionOS operating system and handling image processing. There’s also a separate R1 chip that manages the inputs from the cameras, microphones, and myriad other sensors.

The price for these two is estimated to be $240, which is 15.6% of the total BoM.

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Totaling up all the other bits and pieces, from the frame of the headset to the battery, Omdia estimates the total BoM to be $1,542, or 44% of the cost of the cheapest Vision Pro.

Is a BoM that accounts for 44% of the sale price high or low?

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It’s about the ballpark.

For comparison, estimates put the BoM of a 256GB iPhone 15 Pro Max at around $500, or about 42% of the retail price.

If you think you can calculate a profit margin from this, don’t bother because it’s impossible to figure out all the associated costs, from R&D to assembly and shipping.

Also, this isn’t going to be like the iPhone where Apple sells millions. Omdia estimates that Apple will produce some 200,000 Vision Pro units this year, and “an estimated 1 million units are projected within the few years beyond 2024 with the launch of the new Vision Pro.”