Apple has moved the sales launch of its widely announced wireless AirPods earphones.

"We do not believe in bringing a product to the market before it's done. And we need a little more time before the AirPods are ready for our customers, "explained Apple.

A new start date was not mentioned. At the launch in early September, a sales start was announced in October. To the reasons of the delay, Apple made no information. The news of the delay comes just before Apple's Thursday scheduled presentation of new Mac PCs.

The small earplugs without cables should connect particularly well with Apple devices and also have a microphone for telephone calls and the operation of the assistant Siri. However, they have a price of 179 euros and need to be charged.

AirPods were ridiculed

After the presentation together with the new iPhone 7, which no longer has a classical headphone connection, only some pre-series devices of the AirPods were distributed for tests to journalists.

Checks on the pre-production models should have shown that the AirPods still need fine tuning. A journalist of the page "The Verge" wrote in September, the battery of his test headphones would not have lasted long and Apple would have replaced the devices. Other critics noted problems with music reproduction.

The AirPods are part of a growing number of accessories designed for Apple's most important product, the iPhone.

The delay in the headphones is the first hardware-related shift of the Californian company for more than five years, writes the agency Bloomberg. 2010 a white version of the iPhone 4 was announced, but because of a production problem not sent to customers. On the subject of software, Apple delayed the release of iTunes 11 in 2012 by a month to fix errors.