Apple's Not Going to Like This - Meta Quest Sales Jumped 18% this December
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I've been following the Meta Quest for several years now, using downloads of its companion app as a proxy for unit sales, which spike on Christmas.
Downloads hit an all-time high in 2022 but dropped significantly in 2023. Could it be the Apple Vision Pro that's taking all those users?
Now that the AVP is out I was curious to see if Apple managed to drop Quest sales even more. Can you guess without looking at the chart?
According to Appfigures Intelligence, downloads of Meta Horizon, the companion app to the physical Quest, rose 18% year over year to 6.6M in 2024. That's more than a million new downloads compared to 2023.
This rise doesn't make up the difference lost between 2022 and 2023, which we estimate to be roughly 3M, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.
But just looking at the totals isn't enough to really draw a conclusion, so I dug in deeper using our competitor comparison report and the answer is interesting.
When looking at the downloads by month and comparing downloads from the App Store and Google Play, it does look like something's going on because even though total downloads rose vs 2023, downloads from the App Store actually dipped while downloads from Google Play rose sharply.
Our estimates show downloads from the App Store dropped from 4M to 3.7M year over year while downloads from Google Play rose from 1.6M to 2.8M. Not a huge loss from the App Store, but considering the AVP isn't going to be under every kid's tree, it makes sense.
If you've been following the release of the Apple Vision Pro this year you know that it was pretty lackluster given its price and small ecosystem, which isn't even focused on games like the Quest. From that perspective, the growth in Android downloads makes a lot of sense. I also imagine Meta targeted this group via ads throughout the year.
The little drop in Apple users could be related to the promise of a cheaper Vision coming in the future which has some users holding off on buying a VR headset considering the cost.
I think there's more future in AR, but we're not quite there just yet.
FYI - If you're a journalist and want the more granular dataset I used for this analysis please let me know.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
