Apple has scrapped plans to release its AirPower wireless charging mat

AirPower

Apple has canceled its AirPower charging mat because the product did not achieve the company's high standards, according to a statement from the company.
The news comes after previous reports indicated Apple had run into production issues with the product.
It's a rare move for Apple, which has delayed launches in the past but doesn't typically cancel announced products altogether.

Apple has canceled plans to release its AirPower charging mat, the company told Business Insider in a statement on Friday. TechCrunch first reported the news.

“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,” Dan Riccio, Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering, said in a statement to Business Insider.

The decision not to release AirPower comes after reports indicated Apple had run into production issues related to heat management. Apple initially announced AirPower alongside the iPhone X in 2017 and had planned to launch it in 2018. The product was designed to charge up to three devices at once, and Apple touted it as being a convenient way to charge your iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods at the same time.

Apple made several hardware announcements earlier this month leading up to its event on March 25, including new AirPods that can be ordered with an optional wireless-charging-compatible case. This sparked speculation that an AirPower launch could be imminent, especially after an image of the charging pad appeared on the packaging for some customers that ordered Apple's new AirPods.

It's unclear precisely why Apple scrapped its plans to release AirPower. But the well-connected Apple blogger John Gruber wrote in September that he had heard of an issue with the device's multi-coil design becoming too hot. "There are engineers who looked at AirPower's design and said it could never work," Gruber wrote.

That aligns with the details TechCrunch's Matthew Panzarino heard. "Specifically, I’ve heard that they ran too hot because the 3D charging coils in close proximity to one another required very, very cautious power management," he wrote on Friday.

Canceling a product after it's been announced is a rare move for Apple. The company has delayed product launches in the past, as it did with the first-generation AirPods, for example, but canceling a new device altogether is highly unusual.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We tried the Samsung Galaxy S10 to find out if it's worth the $1,000