Faulty Components Delay Apple Watch Shipments

Faulty components supplied by a Chinese company are to blame for the Apple Watch delivery delays currently experienced by thousands of fans who pre-ordered the wearable device, according to The Wall Street Journal.

AAC Technologies Holdings Inc, based in Shenzen, is one of the firms responsible for the manufacturing of the component in question – the Apple Watch’s taptic engine.

The taptic engine provides the user with a ‘haptic’ feedback experience, unobtrusively buzzing to alert the wearer to notifications and taps on the screen. Apple coined the term ‘tactic’ as a play on words between haptic and tactile.

Destroyed

The Wall Street Journal’s sources even claim that Apple had destroyed completed Apple Watches because of the faulty components, but added that there were no plans to recall watches as no units that contained faulty components were dispatched to buyers.

The sources said that another company called Nidec, based in Japan, also supplied Apple with the same component but none of these were found to be faulty. Because of this, Apple has shifted its taptic component production to Nidec.

Many customers who had pre-ordered the Watch on April 10, and were expecting the units to ship on April 24, were contacted by Apple and told their wearables would not ship now until June.

Earlier in April, a leaked memo from Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s head of retail, said that the shipping delay was caused by “high global interest combined with [Apple’s] initial supply”. One week later, Apple CEO Tim Cook said publicly that: “Right now the demand is greater than the supply.”

Apple had not responded to TechWeekEurope’s requests for comment at the time of publication/

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