Apple's TWS headset shipments grew 200% annually, monopolizing most of the market

The most popular product in the current consumer electronics market is undoubtedly TWS true wireless Bluetooth headsets, which are replacing traditional wired headsets and becoming the standard configuration of smartphones. In the future, shipments are expected to exceed smartphones, reaching an annual shipment scale of more than 1.5 billion units.

Latest news in January 2020: A report released by the Strategy Analytics Device Technology (EDT) team shows that the sales of TWS headphones increased by 200% last year. Among them, Apple, which is in a dominant position, took more than 50% of the market share, and AirPods sales reached 60 million units. Its closest competitors, Xiaomi and Samsung, each accounted for less than 10% of the market share.

This technology giant once again proved its strong appeal and promoted the TWS headset industry on its own. Although it is so popular now, people were not optimistic about this product at the beginning. Four years ago, Apple directly cancelled the 3.5mm headphone jack on the iPhone 7 and released the first generation of AirPods.

At that time, many people thought that this was just an additional product that could increase the average selling price of mobile phones. "Ugly", "easy to lose" and "expensive" became the main complaints. Some netizens said: Why spend nearly 10 times the price to buy a headset with a cut wire? Others joked: Don't buy it, pay more attention to the ground, you can find it!

However, the seemingly simple design actually has a lot of black technology behind it: a pair of headphones plus a charging device has a total of 28 main components and hundreds of components, which is much more complex than traditional wired headphones, and there are also problems with the adaptation of mobile phone software and hardware. In general, in terms of sound quality and experience, AirPods are still ahead of the industry. Apple has its own self-developed W1 and H1 chips, which can be debugged on both software and hardware at the same time, with the best effect. However, most of the chips for wireless headphones on the market are third-party, and the adaptation effect is inevitably greatly reduced.

Good user experience and practicality have brought popularity and sales to AirPods. Famous figures such as Fan Bingbing, Wu Yifan, Neymar, and Beckham have all been photographed using this headset. For a time, it became a must-have accessory for many celebrities and fashionistas.

Industry insiders pointed out that based on the estimated shipment volume of 60 million units, AirPods' revenue last year was about 12 billion US dollars (about 82.5 billion yuan), exceeding the world's top technology companies such as Nvidia and AMD. The gross profit margin of this product is over 50%, and the net profit is around 35-40%. Conservatively calculated, its profit is about 30 billion yuan, far exceeding the annual profit of Xiaomi.

As mobile phone sales continue to decline, AirPods are becoming a new support point for Apple. A research report shows that sales of this series of products will continue to grow this year, reaching 85-90 million units. These sales will generate $15 billion, accounting for 3.5% of the company's total revenue. This means that the revenue contributed by a small headset is almost comparable to that of the iPad. AirPods has sold more than 100 million units since its release, and considering that there are about 900 million iPhones on the market, its sales still have a lot of room for growth.

The huge demand and high profits have also made various players see the huge potential of the market. In addition to mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung, Xiaomi, and Huawei, and traditional acoustic equipment manufacturers such as Sony and Bose, Internet giants such as Amazon and Google have also entered the market. As a convenient and practical portable smart wearable device that can serve as an AI voice interaction hub, TWS headphones have broad development prospects. We will wait and see what new surprises will appear in the future.

 AirPods review: I wore them for 24 hours and experienced these 6 major changes

After using AirPods for three years and throwing away all the earbuds and charging cases, I finally waited for the arrival of the new AirPods.

Although I have a love-hate relationship with AirPods after losing them three times in a row, and I even wrote a postscript about losing them, as an iPhone, iPad, and MacBook user, I can hardly live without the convenience brought by Apple's hardware ecosystem.

Now, three years after the previous generation of AirPods came out, the new AirPods are in front of me. What changes in experience can it bring to me as an old user?

Familiar appearance, only the details have changed

The new AirPods follow the previous design and look almost the same as the old ones. As soon as I unpacked and took out the new earphones, my colleague next to me asked me a 5-point question that stumped me:

Apple did not add the rumored bright black color to AirPods, nor did it add a matte shell. Even though the new charging case has a wireless charging coil, its appearance has hardly changed much and its size is the same as the old one. The new charging case is also compatible with the old AirPods, which shows that there is no change in the new and old headphones and the charging case.

However, this time, Apple focused on the details to differentiate the new and old models.

After the new charging box integrates the wireless charging function, the indicator light showing the charging status is moved from the inside of the box to the front, and the pairing button on the back of the charging box is also moved from the bottom of the box to the middle of the back of the box.

If you previously used a hard protective case with holes for your AirPods, you may find yourself in an awkward situation where you can’t see the charging indicator light or press the pairing button after replacing your AirPods.

In addition, Apple changed the hinge of the new AirPods charging case from mirror polished to matte texture, making it easier for you to distinguish the old and new charging cases at the first glance. Apart from the two points mentioned above, there is basically no difference in appearance between the new and old AirPods.

One charge is enough for a cross-provincial journey

After replacing the new charging box, the battery life of AirPods is also longer than the previous one.

The new charging box improves the charging efficiency of the earphones. Apple officials said that the new AirPods can get up to 3 hours of listening time and 2 hours of talk time after charging for 15 minutes, which is 1 hour longer than the old AirPods that could only achieve about 1 hour of talk time.

From the short and simple experience, we can feel the improvement in charging efficiency of the new earphones. Now the new AirPods charge faster than the previous model when put back into the box, and the battery life of long-term use will be longer than the old model. But if you don’t compare it with the previous model, you won’t actually notice this difference in battery life.

In order to more intuitively demonstrate the improvement in battery life of the new AirPods, we conducted a continuous call test:

At 14:24, the battery level of both L/R earbuds was 100%; at 17:30, after 3 hours and 6 minutes of continuous talk, the earbuds were completely exhausted.

The result is just as officially stated, the new AirPods can support 3 hours of continuous talk time on a single charge, or even longer.

It is worth mentioning that although the second generation AirPods support wireless charging, not all wireless charging pads that support the Qi protocol can charge the new AirPods.

After testing by iFanr, two wireless chargers that both support the Qi protocol can charge the iPhone XS Max, but one of the charging plates did not respond when the new AirPods were placed on it, while the other wireless charger can charge the AirPods normally.

In addition, the new AirPods will heat up significantly when charging wirelessly. However, when using wired charging, the charging box will not have obvious temperature changes.

Faster connection speed is what sets it apart from its predecessors

Compared with the familiar appearance, the new AirPods will have a bigger difference in performance. After adding the H1 chip, the new AirPods have a visibly improved connection speed when pairing devices.

It is worth mentioning that when pairing new AirPods for the first time, the system will require users to update to iOS 12.2 to obtain all setup functions.

Compared to the old AirPods, the new model responds twice as fast as the old model when opening the lid, approaching iOS devices for pairing, and switching devices. This difference can be easily felt.

As for stability, we also used "PUBG: Battlegrounds" to do a test.

When Apple released the new AirPods, it said that the new model can reduce the delay by another 30% when playing games. However, after trying it, we found that the difference in connection stability between the new and old AirPods is not too obvious.

The old AirPods equipped with the W1 chip rarely have any delay or disconnection issues when playing PUBG. Although there will be occasional "stuttering" lags, this is actually a low-probability event and will not occur often.

Judging from this performance, the old AirPods are already very stable when playing games and can meet the needs of users. The new AirPods are also improved on this stable basis, so not all users can experience the changes brought about by the new upgrade.

In terms of sound reception, the new AirPods are better than the old ones. When you use voice in the game, the new AirPods can filter out some noise, making the sound reception clearer, and users don’t have to deliberately increase the volume of their voices.

Overall, the new AirPods are better than the old ones in terms of sound reception.

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