In Apple they follow looking for alternatives to China for the production of some of its devices and among them we find the AirPods. According to the well-known medium Nikkei Asian Review the Cupertino company would be testing to manufacture the small and successful wireless headphones in Vietnam.
Diversification in the production of their devices is precisely this and they have been looking for places to manufacture their devices outside of China for a long time. In this specific case, according to the media, what Apple intends is to avoid the upward taxes that may come and therefore the three companies that manufacture wearables in China: Inventec, Luxshare-ICT and GoerTek, they would now have competition in Vietnam.
What they say in Nikkei Asian Review is that the production would already be in the testing phase and if it works as it should, part of this production will be transferred there initially, then in the event that taxes rise for any reason (war between the United States and China) they have this option open. Problems are often solved by being cautious and in this case in Cupertino they are doing their homework before a possible problem arrives.
The one in charge of starting to mass-manufacture these AirPods will be GoerTek, and they are going to do it in one of their factories that they have in northern Vietnam. Everything has to be prepared in case the time to move production arrives and in this sense it would be the first for AirPods, some AirPods of which it is also rumored we could have a new version before the end of the year with the novelty of resistance to the water and a renewed design.