Published: June 29, 2023 at 3:57 p.m. ET

Apple Inc. is getting ready to sell its $3,499 Vision Pro mixed-reality headset, and it goes without saying that a price tag like that probably won’t engender the same levels of early adoption that the consumer-electronics giant has seen with its past hit devices, like the iPhone, Apple Watch and iPod.

That said, Apple AAPL could still amass an installed base of 20 million users of the Vision Pro and related devices five years out from the product’s launch, besting other players in the market, analysts at market researcher...

Apple Inc. is getting ready to sell its $3,499 Vision Pro mixed-reality headset, and it goes without saying that a price tag like that probably won’t engender the same levels of early adoption that the consumer-electronics giant has seen with its past hit devices, like the iPhone, Apple Watch and iPod.

That said, Apple AAPL could still amass an installed base of 20 million users of the Vision Pro and related devices five years out from the product’s launch, besting other players in the market, analysts at market researcher Canalys predict.

See more: Apple’s new Vision Pro headset will cost $3,499 and arrive in 2024

“With the Vision Pro, Apple will once again show that a late market entry is no barrier to success, and Apple will own yet another new category,” Canalys analysts Jason Low and Nicole Peng wrote in a recent report.

The headset face-off: How Apple’s Vision Pro compares with the Meta Quest Pro, beyond a huge price gap

They note that a base of 20 million users for the Vision Pro family would represent 15% of an estimated 127 million installed base for Apple’s Mac line, which is perhaps not too shabby on a relative basis given how entrenched the Mac business is nowadays.

But Vision Pro adoption would still be taking place at a much slower pace than what Apple has seen for other high-profile devices, as the chart below shows.

Apple teased the Vision Pro headset at its WWDC developer event earlier in June, but the company won’t start selling it until early 2024. It may only ship 350,000 of the devices in the first year of sales, according to Canalys projections, though by the fifth year, Apple could ship upwards of 12 million. That compares with more than 20 million Apple Watch shipments in that device’s fifth year, about 40 million iPods in the music player’s fifth year, and far more iPhones and iPads at the same point.

Only the MacBook had a more muted early adoption curve, similar to what the analysts model for the Vision Pro.

Read: Apple’s march toward a $3 trillion valuation, shown in one chart

Though the sticker price is an obvious roadblock to mass adoption, Apple may cut the price of future headsets as it gets more established in the market. But the company will still need to convince consumers why they need a device like this and tackle issues around comfort and social stigma, among other things, the analysts said.

Don’t miss: Apple’s Vision Pro is ‘frightening’ in the best way - but many questions remain

More from MarketWatch: Apple wants its Vision Pro to mark a computing revolution. Early testers say it’s still just a fancy headset.