Tim Cook has called the AirPods a “runaway success,” but what this means in terms of wireless headphone market share remains to be seen.
A previous report from Slice Analytics claimed that Apple’s new headphones captured a whopping 26 percent for wireless headphone sales in December. However, analysts at NDP Group think the real number is significantly lower — like, in the 2 percent to 3 percent range.
Why the difference?
While analysts frequently disagree with one another, a difference of this scale is unusual. According to NDP, though, it is likely because Slice focuses on online purchases (and ignores brick-and-mortar retail sales).
Don’t get us wrong: Capturing 2 percent (by units) and 3 percent (by value) of a new market within your first month is still pretty darn impressive. But it’s not enough to dethrone established rivals, including Bose (8 percent unit sales, 19 percent in dollars), LG (10 percent unit sales, 7 percent dollars), Sony (7 percent and 6 percent) and Plantronics and Jaybird (both around 2 percent).
The Apple-owned Beats currently leads the market with 25 percent market share in unit sales and 46 percent in dollars.
To me, these numbers make a whole lot more sense (although was there really that much difference in online versus brick-and-mortar availability?). The AirPods have been generally well-reviewed, but they’ve also been in short supply. Delayed for a lengthy period of time, they finally arrived in Apple stores just prior to Christmas — only to almost immediately sell out at every Apple store worldwide.
Have you picked up a pair of new AirPods yet? Leave your comments below.
Via: CNET
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
6 responses to “AirPods haven’t taken the headphone market by storm … yet”
Love mine, I use them all day between online conference calls through the Mac (the microphone is great, people have noticed a difference from my USB Logitech boom mic headset, podcasts in the morning without waking the wife (finally), and I listen to a lot more music on the go again. I absolutely HATE wires.
I really love my AirPods. It has a very nice sound – better than earpods – concrete stable BT connection and light weight construction. I think AP is the nr. 1 earphones on the market
Mine had connection issues at times and I don’t think I’m alone. It occasionally cuts out for a second or two and then also switching between devices can sometimes take a few seconds. Certainly not instant like it should be.
Well how can they when you can’t buy them anywhere?
How can they have taken over the market when you can’t buy the things yet? Anywhere.
They have one deficiency that is probably a dealbreaker for me: no way to control volume, pause, or answer the phone using just the Airpods themselves. The Apple site is actually suggesting you ask Siri to adjust the volume… Think about that for a second. By the time Siri communicates with the internet and realizes what you’re saying and guesses at how much you want the volume lowered, you would’ve already picked up your phone and lowered it. Most bluetooth headphones (esp when they’re approaching the $200 range) have some sort of volume/pause control. So… yeah, knowing how Apple rolls they’re saving these features for Airpod 2.