Apple set out to reinvent wireless charging. Not any more. AirPower has been officially cancelled this evening. The saga of AirPower has damaged Apple’s reputation for cutting edge technology, delivering on promises, and raises questions about its ability to introduce new hardware.
Confirmation on the move came from Apple’s Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering Dan Riccio to TechCrunch:
“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,” said Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering in an emailed statement today.
AirPower was introduced by Tim Cook at Apple’s iPhone X event in 2017. It promised a charging pad that could charge multiple devices on a single pad, offer feedback and device status, and have faster charging times than the regular Qi chargers available then.
Since then Apple has not promoted the technology in any significant way, even though it has introduced a number of Qi enabled devices that charge wirelessly - including the recently announced AirPods 2 wireless charging case - and AirPower pads have been references in documentation and packaging. While Apple has not commented in details with the issues, there have been reports of software issues, the multiple device charging facilities, and overheating issues.
The ability to charge Apple devices using the Qi standard do not suffer from these issues.
While the loss of AirPower sales should not have a significant financial impact, the psychological and reputational damage may be harder to ignore as Apple falls behind the competition in terms of 5G connectivity, multiple lens cameras, and quick charge technology.
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