BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

2 Reasons Why Apple Canceled Its AirPower Wireless Charging Mat: Analysis

Following
This article is more than 4 years old.

Getty

Late last month, Apple canceled AirPower, announced in September 2017 on the same day as the iPhone X reveal, citing that the wireless charger mat will not achieve the company’s “high standards”.

Here’s what Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering Dan Riccio told TechCrunch to explain the decision:

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.”

In reports that followed the announcement, it was suggested that Apple canceling an announced product was very unusual or even rare.

Actually, as far as I remember, I believe that this is the first time in Apple’s recent history that the tech giant cancels an announced product —at least since Steve Jobs returned at the helm of the company he co-founded, back in September 1997 or more than 20 years ago.

However, it’s not uncommon for Apple to pre-announce products that it will ship at a later date. Actually, since Steve Jobs’ comeback, this was a standard procedure. But usually, the actual availability of the product from the announcement date is just a few days away to six weeks for the iPhone XR and all the way to six months in the case of the original iPhone.

The redesigned Mac Pro could be the next Apple announced product to be canceled

Another major future product that Apple promised two years ago to release this year is a redesign of the Mac Pro desktop computer. But that too could be in jeopardy: Apple has been slow updating its current product line (MacBook, iPhone, iPad) which resulted in slower sales and forced the company to drop its prices, another very rare move from Apple.

So there’s a risk that the redesigned Mac Pro might be canceled as well as the company focuses on other priorities.

In any case, a lot of people have wondered why Apple canceled such a simple product as a wireless charging mat, despite its almost limitless research and development resources, both in talents and budget.

The 2 reasons why Apple canceled AirPower

In a note to clients, my firm (Atherton Research), explained that there were really two key reasons for the AirPower project to have failed.

But before we go into that, it’s important to understand that with AirPower, Apple engineers tried to solve one of the main if not the main pain point of using a wireless charging pad: In order for your device to charge wirelessly, you need to make sure the wire coils inside your device is positioned on top of the mat’s wire coils, otherwise, it will not charge.

However, the Apple promise was clear: AirPower will wirelessly charge any Apple device no matter where it’s placed on the pad .

The first problem Apple engineers had to solve was a technical issue of Apple’s own making: The Apple Watch is using a proprietary wireless charging standard, different from the Qi standard used in its new iPhones and the just-released AirPods wireless charging case.

For AirPower to be compatible with both wireless charging schemes, Apple engineers would have to build quite a lot of intelligence and complexity inside the mat (more processing power, more sensors…), which would make it both hard and costly to manufacture.

The second reason for the AirPower failure is Apple’s technological choice of using lots of small coils to produce the electromagnetic induction to charge the device.

Again, the reason for that was to provide a seamless experience for the consumer who could drop any of its Apple devices anywhere on the AirPower mat. However, this architecture creates significant heating and electromagnetic interference issues, especially if the AirPower mat operates at full power to charge the 3 devices at the same time, an iPhone, an Apple Watch and the AirPods wireless charging case.

Understandably, to avoid facing a Samsung Note 7-esque fiasco, where the smartphone literally caught on fire, Apple decided to shelve its product at the last minute before shipping it, after more than 2 years in development.

Something that I’m sure would not have happened under Steve Jobs.

Follow me on LinkedInCheck out my website