Apple loses ground, but still leads the market of «audible»

We’ve talked here several times about how Apple is the unquestioned leader in the device market “Audible” (wireless headphones) and how AirPods they kind of became the “standard” product of the category, just like the iPod was the standard music player in its heyday. The Apple’s advantage is huge, but that doesn’t mean it can sleep on the spot – the competition, after all, is getting stronger.

Take as an example these numbers recently published by Counterpoint Research, referring to the global audible market in the third quarter of 2019. Apple continues to have a considerable advantage over rivals, but not as big as it was a quarter ago.

The Apple held, in the last period, a slice of 45% market share, a reasonable drop compared to the 53% achieved in the second quarter of 2019. The main responsible for the stagnation of Apple, in addition to its own sales, was the Xiaomi: the Chinese has grown considerably in the last few months and won second place in the category, with 9% share – attributed, according to Counterpoint, to the great success of the headphones AirDots in China and emerging markets.

THE Samsung, in turn, was also a victim of the rise of Xiaomi, falling to third place in the segment with a slice of 6%. THE JBL and the Beats (which, in the Counterpoint metric, has separate Apple numbers – Okay) completed the Top 5.

The audible market as a whole is doing very well, thank you: 33 million units sold in the third quarter of 2019, an increase of 22% over the previous period, with the generation of US $ 4.1 billion in revenue. According to Counterpoint, the launch of new products at the top of the segment (such as AirPods Pro, the Amazon Echo Buds and the Surface Earbuds, from Microsoft) has stimulated renewed consumer interest in the segment.

Considering this and year-end sales / promotions, such as sexta-feira Negra and Chinese Singles Day, the market is expected to grow even more in the current quarter; the firm’s expectation is that, in total, they will be sold 120 million audible devices throughout 2019.

It remains to be seen what strategies Apple will adopt to grab the largest possible share of these sales. We, of course, will be watching.

via Apple World Today