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AirPods Have Captured One Quarter of Wireless Headphone Spending Since Launching
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I understand it quite well. I think you're actually missing it. Your argument works if this were about revenue, but I am only discussing % of market share, not revenue. The AirPods cannibalized a portion of Beats market share for items that shouldn't naturally compete with each other, and Bose came in and ate away at the % of market share Beats had. This just shows the Beats lineup is suffering, which I would hypothesize is because they've not improved them as much as their competitors have improved their offerings. Beats are simply less appealing than they were a few years ago.
Oh believe me, I care a lot about audio quality too. But for mobile on the go listening Bluetooth is enough for me.
I'm thinking of stuff like the cassette tape and walkman here, but haven't convenience and fashion pretty much always trumped audio quality in the consumer space?
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The tine of a plastic fork works pretty well for this.
You and I have vastly differing standards on what constitutes "entertaining", but I agree with you 100% on the latter.
The thing I like about them when first buying them was how easily they connected to the iPhone. Also the feel of the little egg in which they reside is grand. Only when in the store where I happily connected my brand new AirPods I learned that I could not alter volume nor skip to next/prior track, I was dumbfounded and asked for the money back. Even the person in the Store could not believe it. He even went to search the web and with ears hanging to the floor he returned and said "I'm sorry to have to inform you that this feature isnt available"-
I know MANY who have had similar experiences. NO one would even DARE to expect that those things would NOT be able to alter volume etc. Like you would not expect to buy a car with no motor or keys to start it...
Steve Jobs would have NEVER EVER signed off on this BS. Never. I wonder why Cook did. Personally, I dont Tim Cook has the faintest idea about intuition nor TASTE. I mean, can any of you imagine Cook trying those AirPods out for a week and NOT ONCE did he wish that he could turn down or up the volume without pulling his iPhone out the pocket ?????
This to me is like totally stupid. Isnt being an executive of a company about KNOWING and FEELING for the products you push out to the public ? How could any Chief Executive sign off on releasing something so flawed that even a deaf person never needing a headphone could tell would be a show stopper... (NO OFFENCE towards deaf people.)
Alice in Wonderland is now Cook in Wonderland !
Remember that the market is also expanding. Beats sales could have risen even as their market share went down because the Apple AirPods massively expanded the market. Also, someone just wanting "something wireless" had a few Beats options prior to the AirPods. Apple could reasonably have expected this market would migrate to the AirPod.
Up to 41% combined from 24% is more than enough to celebrate. Bose did a great job but almost everybody else got hammered.
To correct you, he is right,
For example (with simple numbers cause math is hard apparently for some)
Year 3016
50m total sales
Volume of sales: 20m to iPear: 15m to iBanana: 15 to iApple
Percentage in market share: 40% to iPear: 30% to iBanana: 30% to iApple
Year 3017
100m total sales
Volume of sales: 25m to iPear: 25m to iBanana: 50m to iApple
Percentage in market share: 25% : 25% : 50%
In this scenario that mimics wireless mArket, the actual volume of sales increased across the board because the market volume grew.
Despite having less Market Share, all companies grew.
Market share can also be impacted by market shrink and decline too.
So in regard to the headphones. The wireless market has started to grow quickly. Beats and apples own offerings, while competing. Can both have grown in sales, despite one growing it's market share over the other, without canibibalising sales.
Revenue in the market share statistics is completely irrelevant.
I'm not sure how this is any different that what I said. My argument, using your words, is that the rate of growth for Beats is declining. As the market expands and volume of sales increases, a declining rate of growth for a market leader is not something to celebrate. That has nothing to do with absolute growth in revenue or volume. It's about relative growth, and in this sense, Beats went the wrong direction. Apple's own AirPods is a large part of that, and that's a problem in the long run. The AirPods drive less revenue, and one would guess based on the tech, less profit than any of the Beats offering. So if Beats market share is growing at a relatively slower rate because Apple is eating into it's own sales with a product that drives less revenue and less profit, well, that's just not a good long term strategy.
Yes, that sounds like a good idea. Try that and report back your findings which I am sure everyone are very interested in. While you're at it, sign up as a developer and write a quick caps-counting routine !
In this case, rate of growth can still be accelerating, but one faster than the other, and in percentage based reporting like this, one would appear to shrink, instead of grow.
Percentage based share amounts are not terribly useful measures in absence of other statistics, since they can be easily shown to be not be accurate representation of real market performance.
Percentage based share amounts are not terribly useful measures in absence of other statistics, since they can be easily shown to be not be accurate representation of real market performance.
Are we forgetting about the iPod shuffle now? Very limited interface, all sacrificed to enable a very small and portable form factor. MacBook Air? Expensive, lacking in ports and processing power, all to enable a thin and light form factor?
It's a pointless discussion since Steve Jobs is dead and no one has any way of knowing what he would have endorsed, but I am sitting in a taxi typing this on my iPad and listening to a podcast to my airpods and I am liking them very much. The lack of volume control hasn't really bothered me all that much, simply because I realise that I don't really adjust it all that much.
loved my jaybirds until the damn silicone buds get slipping off and me losing them.
I'll wr
I'll add in a Steve Jobs turning in his grave one just to be sure too as that doesn't get enough screen time on this forum really....
I'll add in a Steve Jobs turning in his grave one just to be sure too as that doesn't get enough screen time on this forum really....
If headphone jack is the main reason for this spike as you implied, then we would've seen the spike of other wireless headphone sales in September when iPhone 7 was released and not in December when the AirPods were released...
Beats was an extremely poor acquisition, no doubt. For $3B, Apple could have made a lot of sweet deals with the record labels and hired all the best engineers in the music streaming space. Plus, they could have had a couple of billion left over to promote the heck out of it.
They definitely didn't need the headphone business, nor the distractions of the merger and the task of managing a sub-brand. They should have kept their eye on the prize and focused on creating the best Apple Music apps on all their devices.
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Perhaps the poster was talking about overall user experience and not just sound quality?
I've owned quite a few headphones over the years, but the AirPod's quick pairing, rock-solid connection, comfort (I can literally wear them all day and sometimes forget they're even there), no wire design, long battery life, quick charging capability, compact case and very good sound quality have made them my go to headphones. Every once in a while I'll rock my Momentums or AKGs but 90% of the time I'll just reach for my AirPods.
Many users, including myself, are experiencing lots of disconnection issues with the AirPods. For whatever reason, MacRumors is not reporting on these issues. I wouldn't recommend AirPods to anyone until Apple acknowledges the issues and reports that they are working on a fix. A link to the apple discussion thread is below:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7795564?start=0&tstart=0
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7795564?start=0&tstart=0
I do love my QC35. Amazing when travelling (or to filter out the kids and wife).
I know they are not the best according to audiophiles, but lucky for me, I don't have audiophile ears. That would be both a blessing and a curse, imho.
About the AirPods, I was sceptical, but colour me surprised. I wouldn't get them, though. I use earphones for the gym and buy cheap ones because I sometimes forget them in my short pockets and wash them... Surprisingly, they do last 2-3 washings!
I am thinking of buying QC35 as well.... Can I ask if they are noise cancelling?
I fly a lot and currently own wired Bose headphones with noise cancellation, which are brilliant at busy airports and when in flight...
If QC35 are good at background noise cancellation/muting, then I may buy them...
Thanks in advance for your reply..
