If you’re an Apple fan who has waited a year and a half to snag an AirPower wireless charging mat, we have bad news: In a rare reversal, the company has canceled the product.
It was originally promised in September 2017, but sources told TechCrunch the charging coil design produced too much heat for safe use. Despite the company’s best efforts, it couldn’t design a cooler, safer alternative.
Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering confirmed the decision in a statement to the tech blog:
After much effort, we’ve concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have cancelled the project. We apologize to those customers who were looking forward to this launch. We continue to believe that the future is wireless and are committed to push the wireless experience forward.
Unlike the conventional, readily available wireless charging mats that have already saturated the market, Apple promised its AirPower mat could charge multiple devices at once, regardless of their placement on the pad.
While the cancellation is unlikely to affect Apple’s bottom line much ― wireless charging pads aren’t exactly a cash cow ― it’s certainly enough to give analysts pause.
“This is a major black eye for Apple,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives told CNBC. “A product that was touted by Tim Cook himself never even makes the shelves, it’s a complete shocker.”