Apple’s AirPods have had an interesting existence. Originally set to launch in October of 2016, Apple’s wireless earbuds finally debuted just two weeks before 2016 drew to a close. Even after launching, AirPods supply was ridiculously tight, with some interested buyers having to wait as long as two months before seeing their orders fulfilled.
Since then, Apple has slowly but steadily gotten a better handle on meeting AirPods demand. That said, AirPods are curiously out of stock across a number of European countries, including France, Ireland, Spain, Germany, Norway, Poland and many others, according to a report from Watchgeneration.Fr. Naturally, the scarcity of AirPods has led some to speculate that an AirPods 2 launch might be coming sooner rather than later.
To this point, Watchgeneration adds that they recently talked to an Apple retail store in France and learned that since exhausting their previous AirPods supply, they’ve noticed that there’s a “new reference” listing on their restocking database, a fact which might also point to an AirPods refresh right around the corner.
Of course, the notion of Apple releasing next-gen AirPods is certainly not new. Earlier in the year, an investor note from Barclays relayed that Apple is planning to release next-gen AirPods with noise cancellation features and “Hey Siri” functionality sometime in 2019. There have also been rumblings that Apple will introduce a sightly redesigned AirPods case alongside its next-gen version of AirPods.
As a quick reminder, Apple later this month is expected to hold a special media event where they will introduce new iPad Pro models. In light of that, it’s entirely plausible that Apple will also take some time to introduce a new iteration of its wireless headphones.
