Pat PilcherA year after Apple announced the AirPower, PAT PILCHER goes in search of the elusive wireless charger.
Apple’s big iPhone announcement came with a hiss and a snore with the Cupertino tech company launching the iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR plus an updated Apple Watch Series 4. The new phones are the most expensive yet. While the steep sticker prices have captured the limelight, few tech writers have talked about what Apple didn’t announce.
A key piece of Apple tech talked up 12 months ago – Apple’s AirPower wireless charger – is still MIA. Where is it? Why a year after announcing it has Apple not launched it?
Last year, Apple said at their launch event that the AirPower charging pad would hit the market at some stage in 2018. As 2019 lurches towards us there is still no official update from Apple. So, what gives?
I could be jumping the gun, after all, at the time of writing Apple still has around 15 weeks left until 2019 so they could announce the charging pad. More realistically, I think we’ll probably have more chance of Trump coming clean on the number of porn stars he’s shagged and given hush money since taking office.
So, will we ever see the Airpower charger launch? Apple seems to have scrubbed almost every mention of it from their website. The absence of any real updates or information from Apple makes it hard to speculate with any confidence on what is happening with it either.
It could be that a tricked-out version of the Qi wireless charging standard has thrown up some hard to solve technical issues. Such difficulties shouldn’t mean a launch isn’t happening. After all, even though Apple faced numerous technical hurdles with the HomePod speaker, they merely moved its launch from December 2017 to February 2018.
The thing is, there shouldn’t be any technical issues acting as a show stopper as there are already a large number of wireless chargers available for the iPhone. Unfortunately for Apple, they are now late entering an already crowded market. It doesn’t bode well for sales.
