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With so many of its rivals offering super-premium features at incredibly competitive prices for quite some time before October 2021, it was genuinely surprising to see Apple unveil the third-gen AirPods without state-of-the-art active noise cancellation.
At $179, the Cupertino-based tech giant felt a revised design, slightly improved battery life, and spatial audio support with dynamic head tracking would be enough to distinguish the non-Pro AirPods 3 from their predecessors, which surprisingly or not, lived on at reduced prices with your choice of a wired or wireless charging case bundled in.
That may not have proven the wisest business decision in Apple's recent history, at least according to the all-knowing Ming-Chi Kuo, who seems to squarely lay the blame at the AirPods 2's door for the moderate success of their sequel.
Insufficient upgrades, insufficient mass appeal
That's right, the AirPods 3 are apparently not as popular as some of you might have expected and their manufacturers had undoubtedly hoped for, prompting Apple to cut production orders by 30 percent or more for this year's second and third quarters.
The AirPods 3 are undeniably good, but maybe not good enough.
In a nutshell, Kuo believes consumers are unimpressed with the aforementioned selling points of the newest AirPods version, which are not deemed important enough to warrant 50 bucks more than the previous generation.
Of course, the price gap can be even greater if you don't have a problem opting for the second-gen AirPods with a good old fashioned wired charging case included, which are currently available for a whopping $60 under their original $159 MSRP.
For their part, the AirPods 3 have actually also been discounted pretty frequently and drastically since making their commercial debut just a few months back, which might explain why they initially found decent success, reportedly leading the entire TWS (true wireless stereo) market during the final quarter of last year.
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Amazon is only selling the third-gen AirPods at $9 less than usual at the time of this writing, and in general, US deals on this particular model have become weaker and fewer in recent weeks.
If you like the OG AirPods Pro, you might want to buy them before it's too late.
That means a change in AirPods release strategy may well be in the pipeline, with the long overdue Pro 2 model widely expected to come out at some point in the second half of 2022 and its noise-cancelling forerunner likely to be immediately discontinued.
That should help Apple avoid a repeat of the current "failed product segmentation" situation, especially if the AirPods Pro 2 will not bring activity tracking features or anything truly innovative to the table, which seems to be the likeliest theory at the moment.
The already weakening AirPods 3 demand also suggests Apple will probably not charge more than $249 for any future members of the market-leading true wireless earbuds family until something groundbreaking materializes, which is... not necessarily bad news.
Adrian, a mobile technology enthusiast since the Nokia 3310 era, has been a dynamic presence in the tech journalism field, contributing to Android Authority, Digital Trends, and Pocketnow before joining PhoneArena in 2018. His expertise spans across various platforms, with a particular fondness for the diversity of the Android ecosystem. Despite the challenges of balancing full-time parenthood with his work, Adrian's passion for tech trends, running, and movies keeps him energized. His commitment to mid-range smartphones has led to an eclectic collection of devices, saved from personal bankruptcy by his preference for 'adequate' over 'overpriced'.
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