Last week, Apple launched the iPhone 18 Pro series and the foldable iPhone Duo. The Cupertino giant may now be looking beyond the hardware itself, as two Beats-branded gaming controllers are reportedly in development for the iPhones.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman mentioned in his Power On newsletter that code found inside the macOS release candidate update points to two gaming controllers in development for Apple iPhones. They reportedly appear with the T6502 and T1057 model numbers.
Interestingly, it looks like the controllers will ship under the Beats brand rather than Apple. Beats executives are said to be overseeing product engineering and conception. Beats operates at lower price points using slightly less premium materials than Apple-branded accessories.
So, launching under the Beats branding lets Apple compete on price against Backbone and SteelSeries without pulling the Apple brand downmarket.
Both controllers will reportedly feature D-pads, thumbsticks, shoulder buttons and haptic motors. More interestingly, Gurman notes evidence of an integrated accelerometer and gyroscope, which would enable motion controls.
This could give the tech giant an edge over third-party controllers since motion sensors can add tilt-based aiming and gesture input, which most gaming controllers for Apple iPhones lack. A good example of this is the Nintendo Switch.
Gurman says Apple has been working on them for more than a year. The actual design of the controllers has not been revealed yet.
That said, Gurman gave no release timeline for the Beats-branded iPhone controllers and Apple has not confirmed anything yet. Pricing and India availability are both unknown at the time of writing. We should know more details shortly, so stay tuned.
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