After being taken off the shelves of Apple's retail and online stores, Bose products are making a comeback just in time for the holiday shopping season.
Reports that Apple will begin restocking its inventory with Bose products first arose on Dec. 9 from iGen.
The French website cites a source close to Apple who says that some retail stores have begun receiving shipments of Bose products and will begin selling them as early as next week.
The rumor was confirmed by 9to5Mac, which was able to obtain a copy of Apple's inventory showing the Bose Soundlink III Bluetooth speaker and Bose Soundlink Mini compact Bluetooth speaker "currently transitioning" into Apple stores. In fact, Apple has already started selling the Bluetooth speaker and its mini version on the Apple Online Store.
On Oct. 17, Bose products were removed from the shelves of Apple's online and retail stores nationwide, with no explanation from the iPhone maker as to why it suddenly stopped selling Bose products. However, speculation was rife that the removal was due to the growing rift between Bose and headphones maker Beats Electronics, which was acquired by Apple for $3 billion earlier this year.
The conflict between Bose and Beats arose from a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Bose against Beats, alleging that the Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre startup infringed upon Bose's adaptive noise cancellation technology patent and requesting the U.S. International Trade Commission to block the sales of Beats Studio and Beats Studio Wireless headphones.
Bose and Apple have decided to work out their legal dispute and have agreed to an out-of-court settlement, details of which have not been made available to the public. Still, the settlement was not enough to smoothen out the wrinkles between both companies, as Bose, an official sponsor of the National Football League (NFL), moved to block the use of Beats by. Dre headphones on the football field.
The move backfired on Bose, however, as Beats co-founder and legendary music producer Iovine praised it when popular players such as San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick showed up at an NFL event wearing a pair of Beats headphones with the pieces of tape placed over the Beats logo. Kaepernick was fined $10,000 by the league, but Iovine said he was pleased because it made Beats by Dre and its endorsers, including Kaepernick, look like heroes.
"What happened there, you have a tech company that's culturally inept," Iovine said at the time. "There's no one at the company that said, 'If you ban these guys, you're going to look bad to the young people, and they're going to look like superheroes even though they're just pure capitalists -- well, they're not pure capitalists, but they're real capitalists and [they] sold that company to Apple -- but you're going to make them look like the underdog."
It appears, however, that Bose and Beats have agreed to shove their differences under the rug as Apple will once again start cashing in on Bose speakers sold at its stores next week.
