Apple Vision Pro return rates are hard to parse
The latest data from Ming-Chi Kuo delves into a number of factors surrounding the Apple Vision Pro, with the latest report detailing the specific rate of return of the headset.
Detractors of the Apple Vision Pro often claim that the Apple Vision Pro return rate is very high, compared to other products. It’s not clear if that’s the case, given data that we’ve collected, and a statement by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman that places the return rate at average or just above average as compared to any other product.
Ming-Chi Kuo has chimed in on that concept now too. As part of a larger report on production volumes, Kuo sees a low return rate.
“According to my inspection of the repair/refurbishment production line, the current return rate for Vision Pro is less than 1%, with no anomalies,” Kuo said in his Medium post on Wednesday. “It is worth noting that 20-30% of the returns are due to users not knowing how to set up Vision Pro.”
Data collated by AppleInsider over the years suggests that this is about the same as the “Pro” line of iPhones returned to retail. In the first month, the rate of return on those is about 1.2%, with the non-Pro return rate at about 1.4%.
About two years ago, a source within AT&T told us that their rate of smartphone returns from all vendors combined is about 2.5% of all units sold, after the first month of release. They acknowledged to us at the time that iPhone return rates were less than half of that.
For additional comparison, Apple’s iPad Pro lineup the first month after a new release is returned by about 0.9% of buyers. The least expensive iPad hits about 1.5% returned in that same time period.
Kuo’s data dovetails with our own research on the matter that we published two weeks after the Apple Vision Pro went on sale. For that research, we spoke with our long-time sources inside Apple’s retail chain at 24 mostly US east coast stores.
“We’ve had a few in a few days, not outside the normal range for new stuff across the entire region,” one senior Apple Retail employee that we’ve been talking to for over a decade who is not authorized to speak on behalf of the company said on February 16. “Maybe like not-pro iPhone levels, proportionately, two weeks after release?”
Other higher return rate users cited by our sources at the time were media producers, and people with a biological incompatibility with the technology.
Our research didn’t and can’t include online returns, where Kuo’s data can and does. Kuo’s check of the refurbished supply chain also includes an unknown number of similarly cracked units, where ours does not.
We are continuing our delve into Apple Vision Pro return rates. So far, they don’t seem to have changed much since that first two-week line.
