A slew of new AirPods, including a cheaper set targeting a $99 price point, and the long-awaited second edition of the AirPods Max, are in the pipeline and scheduled for a 2024 or 2025 launch, according to Ming-Chi Kuo.
The widely respected leaker analyst tweeted a series of comments and predictions regarding Apple’s AirPods business on Thursday. As usual for Kuo, he focused on the supply chain perspective, but his tweets also revealed a number of snippets that will be of interest to Apple customers eagerly awaiting news of upcoming launches.
The next generation of AirPods will likely begin mass shipments in [the second half of 2024] or [the first half of 2025]Kuo wrote, adding that the launches would include a budget set of AirPods and the second-generation AirPods Max.
The original AirPods Max came out in December 2020, more than two years ago, and pundits have been speculating ever since about when Apple will release their successors. Unlike the company’s flagship iPhones, which refresh once a year, the iPads (usually every year for up to 18 months), or the more popular Macs (every two years or less), the AirPods are often two and a half years old. left alone. year or more without any announcement.
- AirPods 1: September 2016
- AirPods 2: March 2019
- AirPods 3: October 2021
- AirPods Pro 1: October 2019
- AirPods Pro 2: September 2022
- AirPods Max 1: December 2020
- AirPods Max 2: ???
This is all the more puzzling since the AirPods product line, which has generally been exceptionally lucrative for Apple, has experienced sales declines as individual models age. It’s hard to see why Apple doesn’t pre-emptively stop this by updating the devices every two years or less, but there are no signs the company will change its policy, particularly for the premium Max models.
However, the news of a budget set of AirPods, which may cost as little as $99, is very interesting. This isn’t an entirely new idea, following a report earlier this month and reports from 2020 that referenced AirPods Pro Lite as being in the pipeline at Apple, but it’s reassuring to get confirmation from a reliable source like Kuo. The so-called AirPods Lite would open up a market Apple hasn’t tapped before, while boosting interest that may have waned in the long period since the last update… although at this rate it sounds like we’ll be on the Lite models wait so long that the others have to be refreshed at the same time.
