Apple has reportedly delayed the launch of the iPhone Air 2. According to The Information, Apple recently “notified engineers and suppliers that they were taking the next iPhone Air off the schedule without providing a new release date.” The report cites “three people involved in the project.”
The second-generation iPhone Air was originally scheduled to launch next fall alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Fold. The Information reports that the device was planned to be even lighter than the current iPhone Air and feature a larger battery capacity.
Apple was also working on bringing the vapor chamber cooling system that first debuted on the iPhone 17 Pro to the iPhone Air 2. A separate supply chain rumor last week said the iPhone Air 2 may have also had two cameras.
The report says that Apple has “stopped short of canceling the next iPhone Air.” In fact, some Apple engineers and manufacturers are “still working on it.”
That said, however, there’s no release date on the books and this decision to remove the iPhone Air 2 from the schedule is “rare if not unprecedented.”
The Information attributes this decision to lower-than-expected sales of the iPhone Air so far. The report says Foxconn has “dismantled all but one and a half of its production lines for the first version and expects to halt all production by the end of the month.”
MacDailyNews Note: The full report via The Information also states, “It’s possible the product is undergoing a significant redesign, and one person said Apple could still release the second-generation iPhone Air as soon as spring 2027 alongside the standard iPhone 18 and budget-friendly 18e.”
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I don’t believe Apple want’s to drop iPhone air from the lineup, or even could if they wanted to.
Not only because it’s a perfect decoy/”medium popcorn”, boosting sales of the pro and base model by making both of them look like a bargain (that’s why they don’t want to drop it even if it doesn’t sell — a decoy is designed to sell the other options) but also because dropping it would create a design problem for the next pro.
I’ll explain how: since the iPhone X there has been an almost jewel like iPhone in the line up with luxury materials (not only glass but steel and later titanium). The same model has been also the technologically most advanced model, and that creates a problem: the ones who need the tech would rather have it in a more rugged form, and the ones who wants the luxury don’t need the added bulk from the tech, for them it just makes the phone thicker and heavier. In the iPhone lineup pro has had dual roles as both the most performant and the most luxury model, and that made it a compromised device — too brittle and too hot to be the perfect tool, too thick and heavy as a jewel.
Apple has solved this problem already once, for the Apple watch: there’s base model with aluminium, a luxury model with premium materials (but same performance) and a more rugged ultra model with best tech. No compromises.
This year Apple did that same for the iPhone: 17 Pro is the rumoured I”Phone Ultra” — tech focused, more rugged with lighter aluminum unibody construction, no glass back, better heat management etc — and the air is the luxury model; performance wise close to the base (even worse in some aspects) but lighter and thinner etc. So splitting the pro’s old dual role made the pro more pro, and air more luxurious. (One more thing that makes this change even more clear: the air colors are very much in line with old pro colors, stylish and understated etc, and especially the cosmic orange is a clear statement to the opposite direction, it looks more like extreme sports than fashion show). The lineup makes a lot more sense this way.
Maybe air is too expensive or maybe the luxury phone market is smaller than expected (or it just takes time to take of) but even if it doesn’t sell they can’t drop it. If they would, they’d need to merge the product lines back. But adding design & material based luxury back to pro would make the next pro worse for the pro users. That’s the best selling segment, and people really love the new more rugged, tech focused design so that wouldn’t make any sense. People love the pro as it is, it’s the best advancement in pro ever — they don’t want to go back.
So, Apple needs to keep air in the lineup so that they can make the best possible pro (maybe they could later on merge air with the base model, when they move the base to the new internal design like the watch where the internals are the same with aluminum and titanium models but until then, they can’t just drop it).
There is a simple pattern in customer preferences that Apple doesn’t seem to get. The majority buys the iPhone with the best camera they can afford.
If you try to sell an iPhone mini, but cripple the camera, sales won’t go through the roof.
Same thing happened to the next iPhone mini and now to the Air.