On Friday afternoon, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) did something unusual, but not entirely unexpected. The company officially canceled the AirPower. The company’s wireless charger was not a rumor — AAPL announced the product on stage at its 2017 iPhone event. However, after a year and a half of delays and quietly scrubbing AirPower references from its website, Apple threw in the towel. The company released a statement saying the wireless charge mat has been canceled, apologizing to the customers who have been waiting for it.
Given that wireless charging is a prominent feature of recent Apple products, including all new iPhones, the Apple Watch and the AirPods, the misstep is not only embarrassing, but it’s also leaving money on the table. Despite the bad PR, Apple stock actually saw a slight rise for Friday afternoon’s close.
It’s Official: The Apple AirPower Is Dead
On Friday afternoon, Apple sent an e-mailed statement to TechCrunch, finally conceding defeat on the AirPower wireless charger.
“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.”
That puts an end to the product that AAPL first announced at its 2017 iPhone event.
What Was the AirPower and Why Was It Important?
Apple has been moving its mobile products toward wireless charging capability, but it has been several years behind rivals like Samsung in supporting the technology in the iPhone. And while the Apple Watch charges wirelessly, it does so with proprietary magnetic induction technology — not the Qi standard that smartphones (including the iPhone) use.
With no wireless charger of its own, Apple was leaving money on the table with every iPhone sold. Customers who wanted to use the convenient feature had to buy a third-party charger.
With Apple stock feeling the pressure from slowing iPhone revenue, these add-on sales become even more important. Apple decided to release its own wireless charger, but wanted its version to charge everything — iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods. The company also wanted to set the bar high for ease of use, so products could be set anywhere on the mat (not in designated locations) and they would just start charging.
Immediately after the announcement, the AirPower was featured on Apple’s website, but the delivery date soon changed to read “coming in 2018” and then “currently unavailable.” After the 2018 iPhone event, the AirPower disappeared from Apple’s website altogether, even as AAPL continued to promote the wireless charging capability of its devices. When the second-generation AirPods wireless earbuds were released several weeks ago, the retail box had a picture of the AirPower charging mat.
An Embarrassing Debacle for AAPL
Like any tech company, Apple has products it works on sometimes right up to the prototype stage and then abandons. That is expected.
The difference with the AirPower is that the company actually announced the product (at its biggest event of the year), showed off pictures of it, put it on its website, kept people guessing for a year and a half and then cancelled it.
Making the situation far worse is the fact that wireless chargers are mainstream. There are hundreds of them on the market. Samsung offers its own version for the Galaxy smartphones, and Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:GOOG, NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google sells one for the Pixel.
Third-party companies are in on the action as well. I recently reviewed a Nomad Base Station that will wirelessly charge an iPhone and AirPods, plus an Apple Watch simultaneously. It works flawlessly, although the Apple Watch charger is physically separate from the charge mat.
Apple apparently ran into a wall by trying to be too ambitious. The company wanted the AirPower to charge multiple devices simultaneously when placed anywhere on its surface while displaying real-time charge levels of each on a iPhone. That approach reportedly resulted in overheating issues that Apple engineers were unable to overcome.
Unfortunately, the public perception is that Apple took a year and a half to try to make a wireless charger — a commodity product — and failed. And it made a big deal about a new product, then killed it. Add to that the fact that it has been trumpeting the wireless charging capability of its products, but has no wireless charger to go with them. The AirPower episode has eroded the public’s perception of Apple’s design prowess.
However, of more immediate concern to AAPL investors is that the lack of a wireless charger means every time the company sells an iPhone or set of AirPods, customers who want the convenience will add a third-party wireless charger to their cart. That’s anywhere from $50 to $150 in potential revenue that could have gone toward helping Apple stock weather the iPhone sales decline.
As of this writing, Brad Moon did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
