TWS Bluetooth headsets can improve functions to meet user needs

As the TWS Bluetooth headset market grows rapidly, it attracts more brand manufacturers to invest and launch more products, making TWS products a hot topic.

Compared with other headphone products that focus mainly on acoustic performance, wireless transmission will cause delays and instability, affecting the sound quality of TWS Bluetooth headphones. Manufacturers must give TWS Bluetooth headphones additional functions to attract consumers to buy. Voice assistants and various voice applications have therefore become the first choice, driving changes and upgrades in TWS products.

1

TWS Bluetooth Headset Market and Manufacturers

TWS true wireless Bluetooth headsets refer to Bluetooth headsets that use wireless transmission between the main and auxiliary earphones. The overall TWS Bluetooth headset market has seen significant growth with the emergence of Bluetooth 5.0, especially in 2019, when it was favored by brand manufacturers and component manufacturers, making each manufacturer look at the market development positively and launch new products to stimulate the market. It is estimated that the shipment volume of TWS Bluetooth headset products will reach 78 million sets in 2019, and may even challenge the market size of hundreds of millions sets.

Apple AirPods is still the largest player in the TWS Bluetooth headset market, accounting for almost half of the market share. However, as more competing products emerge in the future, they will divide the market and break Apple's monopoly.

In addition to Apple, mobile phone brand manufacturers such as Samsung, Sony, Huawei and Xiaomi have also begun to launch TWS Bluetooth headset products. Together with the original headset brand manufacturers and new manufacturers who have seized the business opportunity, the TWS Bluetooth headset market has become a situation of fierce competition among many players.

2

Voice Applications and the Development of TWS Bluetooth Headsets

Voice Assistant for TWS Bluetooth Headsets

In terms of the product features of earphones, the high and low levels of products are mostly defined by acoustic quality, but TWS Bluetooth earphones are mainly considered for convenience. Moreover, from wired to true wireless, in order to reduce latency and achieve excellent sound quality, the cost of hardware such as Bluetooth chips is bound to increase. This also results in that under the same design conditions, although the price of TWS Bluetooth earphones is higher than that of wired Bluetooth earphones, the acoustic quality is not necessarily significantly better, and may even be slightly inferior.

In this case, if the value of TWS Bluetooth headset products is completely defined by acoustic quality, it will be difficult to attract consumers to buy them. Therefore, in addition to acoustic quality, TWS Bluetooth headsets must have additional functionality. Among them, voice assistants and voice functions have become the choice of many manufacturers, and only then will many headset products focusing on intelligence and AI appear.

It can be seen that TWS Bluetooth headsets have both acoustic quality and functionality, and are closer to the product strategy of digital consumer electronics such as mobile phones than other headphone products. Therefore, mobile phone brand manufacturers have become more active in the layout of TWS Bluetooth headset products. In comparison, the number of TWS Bluetooth headset products produced by original headphone acoustic manufacturers is relatively small.

Most mobile phone brands give priority to supporting their own voice assistants on their TWS Bluetooth headset products, such as Apple Siri, Samsung Bixby, Huawei XiaoE and Xiaomi XiaoAi, etc. With the installation of voice assistants, application functions have also expanded to various life functions such as answering calls, sending text messages, voice query and smart Q&A. In particular, the rapid development of AI technology and voice products such as smart speakers has gradually diversified voice platforms and voice functions, and also affected the additional functional value provided by TWS Bluetooth headset products in the future.

Voice leads to changes in TWS Bluetooth headset products

If we look at the basic design of the voice system, it can be divided into four parts: voice recognition, analysis, connection functions and application execution. First, the input sound is recognized and converted into text, and then the text is analyzed to understand the user's command intention, and then the application required for the call command is connected; the operation before the application is executed is the responsibility of the voice assistant. Most designs now place the voice assistant in the cloud, or have a simpler voice assistant built into the mobile device.

When a TWS Bluetooth headset wants to run the voice function, it must first transmit the audio data completely back to the mobile phone, and then start the voice assistant on the mobile phone or the cloud to wake up the corresponding application service through identification and analysis. In this design scenario, a large amount of audio data needs to be transmitted between the headset and the mobile phone, and transmission delays or waiting may occur during use, especially if the voice function used requires multiple interactions, the situation will be more serious.

Therefore, in order to enhance the consumer experience and reduce the negative perception caused by delays and waiting, in addition to strengthening hardware and communication functions, manufacturers have also begun to move voice assistants to TWS Bluetooth headsets. Due to the hardware performance limitations of TWS Bluetooth headsets, it is impossible to move the voice assistant completely to the headset, but if the functions are limited, the hardware burden can be reduced.

In other words, when consumers use the voice function, simple identification and analysis will first be performed on the TWS Bluetooth headset. If it is a simple function such as music operation and making phone calls, the command can be directly transmitted to wake up the corresponding application on the mobile phone. This not only reduces the transmission data, but also eliminates the need to start the voice assistant on the mobile phone or the cloud. If it is a more complex voice function, the voice assistant processing on the cloud will be started instead, which can enhance the consumer experience of using the TWS Bluetooth headset voice assistant.

To improve the voice function of TWS Bluetooth headsets, the hardware performance of the product must be enhanced. On the one hand, the transmission function must be enhanced. In order to reduce latency and poor sound quality, Bluetooth 5.0 and other newer technologies such as TWS+ must be adopted. On the other hand, the chips and memory for running voice assistants must be improved, and the number of MEMS microphones must be increased to enhance the recognition effect of the sound reception.

Manufacturer influence and strategy development

As the TWS Bluetooth headset product market continues to grow and has future development potential, brands and component manufacturers are optimistic about this market. However, in addition to the growth in shipment volume, the introduction of functions such as voice assistants will also change the design and hardware requirements of TWS Bluetooth headset products, further affecting manufacturers' TWS Bluetooth headset market strategies, mainly brand manufacturers, chip manufacturers and MEMS microphone manufacturers.

Brand manufacturers:

Brand manufacturers are generally optimistic about this market, and mobile phone brands and other electronic product manufacturers are the most active. The reason is that the focus of competition in TWS Bluetooth headset products will not only be acoustic performance, but also various functional services, which are areas that digital consumer electronics manufacturers are good at. Therefore, although other headset manufacturers will still deploy TWS Bluetooth headset products, they will not list them as the top priority products, and will be designed to be compatible with the application services of various mobile phone brands.

As for why mobile phone brand manufacturers are actively deploying the TWS Bluetooth headset market in the past 1 to 2 years, on the one hand, it is because the growth of other products has stagnated, while TWS Bluetooth headsets still have great growth potential; on the other hand, it is because of the high gross profit margin of TWS Bluetooth headsets. However, this does not mean that mobile phone brand manufacturers have a clear strategic plan for TWS products, so the homogeneity of products in the early stage is relatively high, and they may adopt a price-cutting strategy to promote shipments.

Among them, Apple will be more active in developing the functionality of AirPods, because Apple has begun to strategically reduce the importance of iPhone functions and gradually transfer some functions to products such as Apple Watch and AirPods, so that these products are no longer just mobile phone accessories, but independent devices to create a larger market.

When TWS Bluetooth headsets become a device, the hardware specifications and prices will increase, and brand manufacturers will therefore be more actively involved in the competition in the TWS Bluetooth headset market, just like they are competing in other digital consumer electronics device markets.

Chip manufacturers:

Judging from the Bluetooth chips used in various TWS Bluetooth headset products, except for Apple which develops its own, all mobile phone brand manufacturers have selected partners. The development of brand manufacturers towards TWS Bluetooth headsets will also prompt their partners' chips to develop towards Bluetooth 5.0.

Samsung is one of the few manufacturers that choose Broadcom. Most other brands choose Qualcomm, Hengxin and Realtek. Chinese brands including Huawei, Xiaomi and Meizu mainly choose Hengxin's chips. In addition to cooperation, performance advantage is also one of its characteristics.