Apple Watch shortages due to faulty taptic engine from one of two suppliers
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Version 0 of 1. The Apple Watch is facing major supply constraints after a key component delivered by one of two suppliers was found to be inherently defective. The component in question is the “taptic engine”, a flagship feature for the watch that enables it to deliver silent notifications with a gentle tap on the wrist, as opposed to a typical vibration. Produced for Apple by two companies, internal testing in February revealed that the components supplied by Chinese firm AAC Technologies “started to break down over time”, according to The Wall Street Journal. Since the errors were caught in time, the newspaper reports that “there’s no indication that Apple shipped any watches with the defective part to customers” and thus no recalls are planned. But the watch component is now being supplied almost entirely by Japan’s Nidec Corp, meaning that consumer demand for the watch may outstrip supply for some time to come. When the watch was made available for pre-orders in early April, customers reported specific units rapidly falling out of availability: early birds successfully secured a watch guaranteed to be delivered by 24 April, the release date, but by the end of the morning most units had an expected delivery date of June or July. The solid gold Apple Watch Edition, which retails for upwards of £8,000, was particularly hit, with some models being so backordered that they have an expected delivery date of August (since then, the Edition supply problems seem to have been sorted, and gold lovers can pick one up for June delivery). Indications of a problem with the taptic engine had manifested in the review units received by some outlets ahead of launch. Writer John Gruber reported that the first watch Apple sent him to review had a faulty taptic engine, necessitating a replacement by the end of the first day. Gruber also questioned whether Apple could be certain that no faulty devices made it to customers, passing on reports from at least one reader that their device, bought at retail, had a faulty taptic engine. |