earlier this year Apple launched its small tracking device AirTag in a segment where its biggest competition was Tile. Six months after the launch of AirPods, Tile CEO They say business is going very well. Tile CEO CJ Prober tells Wired the company has sold more than 40 million tile Appliances and that revenue grew in the first half of the year.
Prober said competition with Apple was unfair but the company continues to see strong business momentum. As Wired reports, “Third-party product activation is a big focus of ours, we’re up more than 200 percent year over year.”
Before Airtags actually hit the market, the Tile was one of the more popular tracking devices users could buy. In fact, Tile products were also sold in Apple stores.
Prober elaborated on that, saying that Apple used to sell Tile products but “have been kicked out of their stores”. He also said that Apple has made changes to iOS that “deprecated” the Tile experience. That said, Apple did this in favor of AirTags and the Find My Network it has. He said Apple keeps all the best platform capabilities for itself, citing the example of seamless activation.
But despite all this, Prober said, that business was great. However, it would have been better if the competition was fair.
As Wired reports, Apple denies any claim of self-preference and says it really welcomes the competition.
,