Coronavirus Brings AirPods Production To A Near Grinding Halt

Recently we had heard that if you wanted to get your hands on Apple’s AirPods Pro, the headphones have been backordered until March. Given the popularity of the headphones, it wasn’t surprising, but a new report from the Nikkei Asian Review is suggesting that maybe popularity isn’t solely to blame for the low stock.

The report claims that due to the coronavirus outbreak, it has affected a number of Apple suppliers in China, and as such, it has brought production of the AirPods to a near grinding halt. Apple had initially told their supplies to ramp up production of the headphones, where they were aiming for 45 million units to be produced in the first half of 2020, but it seems that Apple might have a hard time meeting that goal.

This is because due to the virus outbreak, Apple’s suppliers were forced to shut down their factories for two weeks, and even then once production resumes, components could be hard to come by.

According to a person familiar with the situation, “Because of the virus outbreak, it has already been about two weeks since the assemblers have shipped any new AirPods series. All of the stores and carriers selling Apple products are really counting on suppliers to resume work next week.”

It has gotten so bad to the extent that Apple is now hoarding existing stock of the AirPods for its own online and retail stores.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Audio, Gadgets
Tags: AirPods, Headphones