In-depth analysis of wireless headphones: 18 solutions from 8 major chip companies

With the launch of Apple’s new AirPods wireless headphones in March this year, true wireless Bluetooth headphones (TWS) have become popular again.

2018 is a new node for the market explosion of TWS headsets. With Huawei, OPPO, Xiaomi, BOSE, and SONY following suit, GFK predicts that global TWS headset shipments will increase by 41% year-on-year in 2018, and the market size will reach 5.4 billion US dollars; domestic retail sales will increase by more than 630% year-on-year, and the online market retail volume will reach 2.8 million units, with retail sales of nearly 1.6 billion.

Currently, there are 8 major chip brands on the market that have launched 18 TWS headset solutions, including Qualcomm, Airoha, Zoro, Actions, Hengxuan, Cypress, Realtek, etc.

In this issue of Smart Insider, we recommend a TWS headset research report from Guosheng Securities, which analyzes the current status of the TWS headset industry chain and conducts an in-depth disassembly of several mainstream headsets in the market. If you want to collect the report in this article (Guosheng Securities - Hearing the melodious music again - TWS headset series research part 2), you can reply to the keyword "nc360" in the Zhidongxi public account to obtain it.

The following is the dry goods presented by the intelligent internal reference:

1. Apple is ahead of the competition, and the shipment volume of the new AirPods is expected to double

The launch of Apple's wireless earphones AirPods officially opened up the market space for true wireless Bluetooth earphones (TWS). Subsequently, it quickly attracted widespread attention due to its advantages such as wireless, intelligent, small size, good sound quality, efficient connection and stability. Mobile phone/earphone giants such as Huawei, OPPO, Xiaomi, BOSE, SONY and others have also entered the market.

On March 20 this year, Apple once again released a new version of AirPods headphones. This product is equipped with a new H1 chip, supports voice wake-up of Siri, has a longer battery life, and is priced at 1,279 yuan. There is also a version equipped with a new wireless charging box, priced at 1,599 yuan.

The new AirPods are equipped with Apple's latest H1 headphone chip, which makes the connection more stable and faster. According to the official website, the new AirPods can switch devices twice as fast as before, and the connection speed when making calls is 1.5 times faster than before.

According to Apple's official data, the sound delay of the new AirPods when playing games is reduced by 30% compared to before; voice wake-up Siri has been added; it supports unlimited charging, can be used for 5 hours on a single charge, and can last for 3 hours of calls, and as long as the earphones are placed in the box to charge for 15 minutes, the usage time of the earphones can be increased by 3 hours.

In just one month, AirPods became the most popular wireless headset in the United States. According to data from market research firm Slice Intelligence, they have captured 26% of the market share in just one month of their release, surpassing Beats and BOSE headsets.

According to the latest data from Counterpoint, in the fourth quarter of 2018, AirPods shipments accounted for 60% of the market, reaching 12.5 million units, far exceeding other products. The second-best-selling TWS wireless headsets are Jabra Elite Active 65t and Samsung Gear IconX.

It is estimated that the shipment volume of AirPods in 2018E/2019E/2020E will be 26/50/70 million units, and is expected to exceed 100 million units in 2021, with year-on-year shipment growth of 100.0%/92.3%/40.0%/42.9% respectively.

2. In-depth disassembly of wireless headphones and a thorough investigation of the industry chain

The TWS industry chain mainly includes ODM manufacturers and component manufacturers of wireless headphones, including main control chips, storage chips, FPC, voice acceleration sensors, MEMS, overcurrent protection ICs, batteries, etc.

The ODMs and acoustic device suppliers involved include Luxshare Precision, Goertek, Goertek, and Intone Communications, and the chip manufacturers include Hengxin, Realtek, and Airoha.

Storage manufacturers include GigaDevice (Nor Flash) and Adesto.

Will Semiconductor is a designer and distributor of discrete devices and passive components.

In addition, Xinwoda, Pengding Holdings and some Taiwanese manufacturers such as Yaohua and Holley will also benefit from the rise of the TWS headset market.

Next is the disassembly of wireless headphones from Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, and BOSE.

1. Apple AirPods

Taking AirPods as an example, according to the disassembly of the 51audio website, the earbud part of the AirPods headset includes a single-sided circuit board (PCB), a double-sided PCB, and a small hose extending to the bottom of the Airpods.

The design and number of chips in each Airpods are the same. The main IC components and their numbers inside the two earbuds and the charging case are shown in the table above.

On the single-sided PCB, we can see the W1 SoC, a Cypress SoC, an STMicroelectronics low-dropout (LDO) regulator, and a few other components.

On one side of the double-sided PCB, there is a Maxim audio codec and a Bosch BMA280 accelerometer. On the other side, there is an STMicroelectronics ultra-low power 3-axis accelerometer, an STMicroelectronics LDO regulator, an unidentifiable light sensor, and some passive components.

Inside the hose and battery assembly at the end of each Airpod is a MEMS microphone component from Goertek.

In addition, the disassembly report also shows an IC with silkscreen 25SL 128A 1829, which is a 128M NOR Flash. The demand for high-end 128M NOR flash has been driven by TWS earphones. In addition to Apple, products based on MediaTek and Qualcomm CSR platforms also use similar solutions.

It can be seen that TWS headphones will become a bright spot in consumer electronics in 2019-2020, and will also become the X factor of high-end NOR.

2. Huawei FreeBuds

In addition to Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi and traditional headphone manufacturers have also followed suit in the TWS headphone industry.

Huawei released two TWS true wireless Bluetooth headsets, FreeBuds and FreeBuds 2 Pro.

By disassembling Huawei Freebuds 2 Pro, we can see that Huawei TWS headphones mainly include the following electronic components:

Huawei FreeBuds 2 Pro is Huawei's first true wireless Bluetooth headset that supports the HWA standard. Huawei FreeBuds 2 Pro not only supports Hi-Res Wireless Audio, but also supports wireless charging. It also has the latest bone voiceprint unlocking technology, which can accurately obtain the owner's bone voiceprint information when speaking, and with AI artificial intelligence recognition technology, the owner's identity authentication can be completed in one sentence.

Through the disassembly report of 51audio.com, we can see that FreeBuds 2 Pro uses a dynamic speaker and the main control chip is BES2300 from BES Hengxuan. BES Hengxuan BES2300 is a fully integrated adaptive active noise reduction solution that supports Bluetooth 5.0, LBRT low-frequency forwarding technology and dual-mode Bluetooth 5.0. It also supports the third-generation FWS full wireless stereo technology, dual microphones, etc., supports adaptive active noise reduction technology, and also supports external heart rate sensors, acceleration sensors, etc.

Dialog's DA14195 audio processing chip can process up to 192kHz, 32-bit PCM audio, and supports environmental noise, echo cancellation, virtual surround sound and other functions. It also supports up to 6 microphones for beamforming and position-aware applications, thereby better supporting applications that need to perceive the location of sound.

The FreeBuds 2 Pro charging box uses the STMicroelectronics STM32F030Cortex-M3 high-performance MCU, integrating 1MB Flash memory, 128KB SRAM and USB 2.0 controller, etc. It is also equipped with the IDT P9221 wireless charging receiver solution, which is a highly integrated WPC-1.2.2 compatible 15W wireless power receiver that uses magnetic sensor charging technology.

FreeBuds 2 Pro also has bone voiceprint ID, and the talk time of the headset on a single charge can reach 2.5 hours; with the multiple additional charges stored in the charging box, the talk time can reach 15 hours, and the listening time can reach 20 hours. In addition, the HUAWEI Mate 20 Pro phone can also reverse charge the headset box, making it easy to deal with emergency power replenishment when going out.

3. Xiaomi Air

At the MIDC2018 Xiaomi AloT Developer Conference, Xiaomi announced the Xiaomi special acoustic standard laboratory project. Products that meet Xiaomi's acoustic standards include Xiaoai speakers, Xiaomi mobile phones, Xiaomi laptops, Xiaomi smart alarm clocks, etc.

In 2018, Xiaomi released two TWS true wireless Bluetooth headsets, the Xiaomi True Wireless Bluetooth Earphones Air and the Xiaomi Bluetooth Earphones AirDots Youth Edition.

By disassembling the Xiaomi Air, we found that the Xiaomi Bluetooth headset mainly includes the following electronic components:

The biggest feature of Xiaomi Bluetooth Headset Air is that it supports active noise reduction, and the main and auxiliary earphones can be switched freely and can be used independently. Xiaomi Bluetooth Headset AirDots Youth Edition uses upgraded Bluetooth 5.0 connection, and both earphones support Xiao Ai's self-powered voice assistant.

4、BOSE SOUNDSPORT FREE

On January 24, 2018, BOSE launched the new SoundSport Free fully wireless headphones. This headset is based on a true wireless design and strives to achieve a balance between size, performance and stability.

Each earphone weighs only 10 grams and is 2.8 cm high and 3.0 cm deep. The SoundSport Free wireless earphones are equipped with a new signal system to maximize the strength and reliability of wireless signals, and can maintain a stable connection with mobile phones or tablet devices - regardless of distance and space, always maintain a smooth connection.

BOSE digital signal processing technology, volume-optimized equalizer and rechargeable lithium-ion battery form a micro-acoustic system that provides up to 5 hours of powerful, clear music.