A report earlier this week alleged that one of Apple’s European resellers told a customer it would receive first AirPods stock on November 17 and start selling the earphones by November 18-19.
Contradicting the story, Barclays analysts heard chatter in the Asian supply chain that mass production of the delayed accessory is scheduled to kick off in December in time for Christmas, but in limited quantities, Yahoo Finance reported Friday.
“We did hear that the AirPods should finally start production in December,” Barclays researcher Blayne Curtis and team wrote in a note distributed to clients on Friday.
The initial production run is pegged at about ten to fifteen million units, suggesting the reason for the AirPods delay in the first place might have something to do with low yields or other unforeseen manufacturing problems.
No matter how you look at it, having fifteen million AirPods at launch seems like a promising beginning for Apple’s first-ever wireless earbuds, priced at $159.
DigiTimes recently wrote that the AirPods may not start shipping before January 2017.
Originally advertised with a tentative “late October” release date, the AirPods are now listed on Apple.com as “coming soon” following an unexpected delay because “we don’t believe in shipping a product before it’s ready and need a little more time before AirPods are ready for our customers”.
The AirPods work with any Bluetooth device like any regular wireless headphones.
Each AirPod has a built-in six-hour battery, with the charging case extending their run time to up to 24 hours. Apple’s in-house designed W1 wireless chip allows for features like invoking Siri by double tapping one of the AirPods, zero-configuration pairing with multiple Apple devices through iCloud and more.
Source: Yahoo Finance