The iPhone Air bombed hard enough that it straight up murdered the entire ultra-thin smartphone category before it even took off. Chinese brands like Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo all ditched their plans to build competing slim phones after watching Apple faceplant.
DigiTimes says these manufacturers are pivoting to throw eSIM tech into a bunch of different models instead of banking everything on skinny designs. Foxconn apparently shut down all iPhone Air production lines by the end of November, while Luxshare already pulled the plug back in October. Apple pushed the iPhone Air 2 back to spring 2027, which Mark Gurman thinks has more to do with waiting for the A20 chip on TSMC's 2nm process than anything else.
Turns out consumers just care way more about battery life than shaving off a few millimeters, which is why the Chinese brands are bailing on the whole ultra-thin experiment.
DigiTimes says these manufacturers are pivoting to throw eSIM tech into a bunch of different models instead of banking everything on skinny designs. Foxconn apparently shut down all iPhone Air production lines by the end of November, while Luxshare already pulled the plug back in October. Apple pushed the iPhone Air 2 back to spring 2027, which Mark Gurman thinks has more to do with waiting for the A20 chip on TSMC's 2nm process than anything else.
Turns out consumers just care way more about battery life than shaving off a few millimeters, which is why the Chinese brands are bailing on the whole ultra-thin experiment.
