Tim Cook was asked about Vision Pro's sky-high price tag. He pointed to the 5,000 patents inside.

• Apple's new Vision Pro hits stores Friday amid a wave of optimism from the company.
• The product costs $3,500, but sold out pretty much immediately.

Apple's new mixed-reality headset's $3,500 price tag may be steep, but it accounts for the sheer amount of technology included inside, CEO Tim Cook told analysts during an earnings call Thursday.

The Apple Vision Pro hits stores Friday, marking the company's first major product launch in years. The spacial computing headset came up frequently during the call, after Apple reported its first year-over-year sales gain in over a year.

Die-hard fans apparently didn't blink at the cost when preorders opened on January 19 — Apple sold out of the device pretty much immediately.

But for the rest of us, the $3,500 price point could come off as steep. One analyst recently said demand may even taper off soon, especially given how niche the headset is.

When Cook was asked about the cost during Thursday's earnings call, he said the headset's technology includes 5,000 patents.

"If you look at it from a price point of view, there's an incredible amount of technology packed into the product," Cook said.

The Vision Pro has two Apple Silicon chips and 600 new apps and games available. It allows its wearers to experience digital content in their physical surroundings.

"It's, of course, built on many innovations that Apple has spent multiple years on, from silicon to displays and significant AI machine learning — all the hand tracking, the room mapping, all this stuff is driven by AI," Cook added.

Already, companies such as Walmart and Nike are looking into uses for the Vision Pro for their customers or employees, Apple's CFO Luca Maestri said Thursday.

Early impressions of the device mention the somewhat cumbersome weight of the headset — blame it on all those patents.