According to the research note, Ives claims that Apple’s new AirPods will be released in time for the holiday shopping season later this year and could apparently sport some design enhancements. It is unclear as to what kind of design changes we could be looking at, but for the most part, the first-gen and second-gen AirPods are similar in design, although admittedly they do look like Apple’s regular earbuds minus the cables.
It does seem odd that Apple would release two AirPods in a single year, and we imagine that there might be some who might be miffed that Apple has a new set of AirPods not too long after the second-gen’s release. That being said, this might not be Apple’s only attempts at creating a new set of headphones.
There have also been rumors that Apple could be working on a pair of over-ear headphones that could also be planned for a late 2019 launch. Take it with a grain of salt for now, but hopefully we’ll have more details in the coming months.