As Apple prepares to launch its own new audio products, the company has stopped selling headphones and wireless speakers from rivals including Sonos, Bose, and Logitech.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
The Cupertino, California-based technology giant has long sold third-party hardware on its website, one of the largest e-commerce operations in the world. All headphones and speakers from Bose, speakers from Logitech’s Ultimate Ears brand and Sonos’s latest smart speaker disappeared from Apple’s online store at the end of last month, according to checks by Bloomberg.
Employees at Apple’s physical retail locations were also instructed to remove the products for sale at stores in recent days. Shares of Sonos fell as much as 7% in extended trading following the news.
The moves come as Apple develops multiple new products to expand on its audio strategy. The first Apple-branded over-ear headphones could be announced as early as this year, Bloomberg has reported. The company has also been working on a smaller version of its HomePod smart speaker.
MacDailyNews Take: Obviously, and also a normal occurrence, Apple has to make space for some new Apple goodness in the headphones and speakers category!
Making room in its stores which have limited space seems innocent — after all we don’t want Apple Stores to look as piled on as big box stores — but removing competing products is bad optics at this time when Congress aims its cross hairs at successful technology companies and may give naive legislators another reason to double down on their misguided push to punish them and Apple.
Bad optics.
Your comments are bad optics, no need to focus attention to a non-mistake. Ridiculously long sentence too, obnoxious really.
I had Apple branded headphones in the early 90s! And Apple branded speakers too!
These babies
Oh my – I would love it if Apple released a Sound bar that hooked to the Apple TV that included an integrated camera for FaceTime calls…
It doesn’t matter, those devices are for sale by many other retailers. So what?