Limited Supply of Apple Watches Reportedly Due to Taptic Engine Problems

Image via iFixit

The Apple Watch; it's Apple's latest gadget and works as an accessory to the iPhone, allowing what acts as a remote control relay from your wrist to perform actions directly from your iPhone as long as it in in Bluetooth range.

The new gadget has been available to order for just under a week, and was originally made available for pre-order just over two weeks ago. Since then, a very small number of orderers have received their units while many continue to wait. Why? – Manufacturing issues are causing delays.

We've known about the delays since last month, so the delays in shipping as a result of production problems are no surprise, but the question that has remained unanswered until today is what was actually causing the delays; what part of the manufacturing process is Apple having problems keeping up with?

A new report from The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday reveals that Apple's problem in manufacturing the Apple Watch in a timely manner has to do with "faulty" Taptic Engine units that can reportedly "break down" over time. This problem has caused Apple to have to re-make many of their Apple Watches to prevent shipping defective units to anxious customers.

Originally Posted by The Wall Street Journal

After mass production began in February, reliability testing revealed that some taptic engines supplied by AAC Technologies Holdings Inc., of Shenzhen, China, started to break down over time, the people familiar with the matter said. One of those people said Apple scrapped some completed watches as a result.

The Taptic Engine is the part of the Apple Watch that simulates the gesture of being 'tapped' on the wrist when you receive a notification. It's a type of haptic feedback that you can actually feel, as well as hear, when the notification sound is emitted.

If you're still waiting on your Apple Watch, you're likely waiting on Apple to re-stock their faulty inventory of Apple Watches with non-faulty units. Remain patient and Apple will continue to ship out the various models in the order that they were ordered based on model.

Sources: The Wall Street Journal via MacRumors