Apple spokesperson communicated with TechCrunch, saying: "We (Apple) don't believe in shipping a product before it's ready, and we need a little more time before AirPods are ready for our customers."

If you turn the PR filter off, this should read something like, you know, we messed up and there is no chance in hell that we can ship any of them until later this year probably even later. At least it means that we will need more Lightning to 3.5 mm connector dongles.

Digitimes quoting Economic Daily News (EDN) claims that Taiwan based Inventec is expecting a seven percent year on year revenue grown thanks to AirPods preorders.  

It is hard to form an opinion around AirPods as Apple PR machine sent samples only to the press that really likes Apple and thinks that the company is ithe nventor of both  the wheel and electricity. The product sounds innovative, but again costs more than it should, fitting nicely in Apple's "rip off your customers" portfolio.

Apple is not in the business of innovation, and like any other publicly listed stock company, they are in the business of making money, a lot of it, and you, the end users are the ones who are letting them down. We don’t want to get into the morality of their action, but the fact that Apple AirPods are delayed possibly until early next year is a big flop for an industry giant.

The worst part is that many other non-Apple companies will remove the 3.5-inch connector, just because Apple did it, since companies like Asus among a bushel of others copy Apple’s moves almost religiously.