Smartphone roll-in, can TWS headphones escape this fate?

Set micro-network news, TWS headphones seem to have long passed its highlight moment, and now affected by factors such as the rebound of the epidemic, its shipments such as mobile phones have also become affected objects.

According to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, from January to February 2022, the overall shipment of mobile phones in the domestic market totaled 47.886 million units, down 31.7% year-on-year. As an important product line in the field of consumer electronics, smartphone shipments have declined significantly in 2022, so can TWS headphones escape this fate?

In this regard, some insiders said bluntly, in fact, last year, the growth rate of TWS headset market shipments has slowed down significantly, and in 2022, due to the impact of factors such as the epidemic, it has indeed caused a certain impact on the shipments of traditional TWS headset brands, e-commerce and other manufacturers. However, it believes that although there is a certain correlation between TWS headphones and mobile phones, it is not strongly related to mobile phones, because in addition to applications on the mobile phone side, TWS headphones can also be applied to other fields other than mobile phones.

Another industry insider admitted that TWS headphones have gone through the first stage from scratch, and now it has developed to the second stage of improving quality, so it is difficult to have a substantial increase in shipments, but it believes that TWS headphones still have three or four years of brand growth.

The overall domestic TWS headset market is not good: the shipment of white-label TWS headsets has plummeted

A few days ago, according to the Nikkei news quoted sources reported that due to the Impact of the Ukraine crisis and inflation, Apple plans to reduce the order of Airpods wireless headphones by more than 10 million units in the whole of 2022, due to cold demand to reduce inventory levels.

Once this news was released, it immediately aroused heated discussion, so how is the current domestic TWS headset market performing? Is there a difference between it and the direction of Apple's trend?

In this regard, a person who is deeply involved in the TWS headset market admitted when communicating with the author that from the current situation, the entire domestic TWS headset shipments fell by about 30% year-on-year this year, while the overall product unit price fell by about 35% year-on-year.

"As of now, this year's TWS headphone shipments are indeed significantly worse than last year, and in the TWS white-label market, there is a situation where TWS headphone upstream manufacturers' shipments have fallen by nearly half." Another TWS upstream industry insider revealed.

It can be seen that the entire TWS headset market is now facing a more embarrassing situation.

So what factors caused the TWS headphone shipments to plummet? The above-mentioned person added that the decline in domestic TWS headphone shipments is mainly caused by four major reasons, first, in recent years, TWS headphone brand manufacturers, some manufacturers will pull down the price of products, this marketing measure, further squeeze the market share of white-label TWS headphones.

Second, the rebound of the epidemic has affected the shipment of TWS headphones to a certain extent; third, last year, the major manufacturers desperately prepared a large number of goods, but this year's pulling situation is not good, which in turn reduces the actual product shipments.

Fourth, in the fierce competition of the TWS headset market, many practitioners turned to the business of AIOT and smart phones and other related businesses, a series of internal or external measures in the industry, is an important reason for the decline in TWS headset shipments.

In other words, today's TWS industry has a significant lack of growth. Speaking of the current dilemma of the TWS industry, a person who has been deeply involved in the industry for several years gave his own views, believing that TWS headphones have gone through the stage from scratch, and now the TWS industry has ushered in a new stage of development, it needs more highlights and innovation to drive consumer consumption, so it is significantly more difficult to increase shipments with new technologies.

This also means that the increase in the difficulty of innovation has become the main reason for the current troubles of TWS headphone manufacturers, and on the way to continuous consumption upgrading, more requirements have been put forward for the upstream suppliers of TWS headphones.

Can Apple's new technology break the game?

In the consumer electronics market, Apple is a trailblazer.

In September 2016, Apple released the first generation of Airpods, and the innovative design caused a huge innovation in the product form of wireless headphones, and TWS headphones officially entered the public eye.

With good design, charging efficiency, Bluetooth matching and wearing comfort, Airpods have achieved a good market response, shipments have increased rapidly, other smart phone manufacturers at home and abroad, audio manufacturers have followed up, and the TWS headset market has ushered in explosive development.

According to Counterpoint Research data, global brand TWS headphone shipments were only 9.18 million pairs in 2016, and in 2018, it grew to 46 million pairs, with an average annual compound growth rate of 124%. Driven by the low-end brand TWS headset market, the shipment of global brand TWS headphones reached 233 million pairs in 2020, an increase of 78% year-on-year.

On the other hand, with the rapid development of the industrial chain, the rapid rise of the white-brand TWS headset market, due to the relatively low price of white-brand TWS headsets, it is very good to meet the purchase needs of a large number of price-sensitive consumers, making the overall average price of TWS headsets have declined, accelerating the promotion and popularization of TWS headsets.

However, today Apple also suffers from a development ceiling. According to Canalys' latest statistics, in 2021, Apple's AirPods TWS headphone shipments fell by 11.4% to only 86 million units.

Even so, Apple still plays a pioneering role in the field of Airpods. According to an industry insider, from battery life to sound quality, differentiation has now become an important driving force to stand out from the competition, and Apple is developing new technologies to better serve consumers.

The above-mentioned person revealed that in order to integrate more functions, Apple plans to replace the laser chip with an LED chip on the new AirPods product.

"This allows TWS headphones to achieve more functions, such as heart rate detection, blood oxygen, skin detection, etc." The person further introduced.

It can be seen that Apple is working the new features of TWS headphones, and Apple's move also means that TWS headphones will give birth to more daily new features in the future.

From the current situation, headphones have become an important product line in the field of consumer electronics, however, it is difficult to open a window of breaking the game with a single new function or application. (Proofreading/Sara)