Edit | Yu Bin
Produced by | Chaoqi Network "Yu see column"
With the strengthening of people's awareness of sports health, bone conduction headphones that are more suitable for use in sports scenes have also been favored by more and more professional sports enthusiasts. In recent years, Shokz Shaoyin Technology, with its own acoustic core technology, has successively launched a variety of bone conduction headphones, which have risen rapidly in the field of professional sports electronics consumption.
From an unknown foundry to a market giant in the field of professional sports headphones, Shokz Shaoyin Technology, which now ranks second in the bone conduction headphone industry with a market share of 33%, has developed rapidly in recent years. However, Shokz Shaoyin Technology wants to stand in the front row of the market for a long time, and may continue to cultivate the internal strength of the product.
Shaoyin Technology is difficult to make up for the innate deficiency of bone conduction headphones
Shokz Shaoyin Technology has successively launched more than ten mature products, although it has won many international awards such as the German Red Dot Award and the Japanese Good Design Award, but from the feedback of consumers, Shokz Shaoyin Technology does not seem to have perfectly solved several "congenital deficiencies" of bone conduction headphones.
Image source: Shokz Shaoyin Technology official website screenshot
First of all, the interference of external noise cannot be ruled out. Shokz Shaoyin Technology's bone conduction headphones allow the sound in the headphones to coexist with the sounds of the outside world, which is the biggest advantage of bone conduction skills, but also its biggest disadvantage.
The principle of bone conduction headphones is that sound is conducted through the skull, and then the ear ossicles vibrate together to the auditory nerves of the brain and then converted into bioelectric signals. Since bone conduction headphones do not need to be worn in the ear, the electronic noise generated by the headphones themselves can be filtered out. However, when using bone conduction headphones to talk and listen to music, you cannot avoid the interference of external noise.
Even if the 2022 new generation of headphones Open Run Pro launched by Shokz Shaoyin Technology has been improved in terms of sound quality, endurance, interactivity and other aspects, it is still difficult to provide users with "immersive" music enjoyment.
Because it is an open and non-blocking design, Shokz Shaoyin Technology cannot guarantee the user's sense of immersion. Although such a functional setting is an advantage in the professional sports field, it only "speaks for the sports field", objectively speaking, limits the use scenarios and market coverage of the product itself.
Secondly, sound quality is a technical weakness that is difficult to overcome. Although the sound propagation speed of bone conduction is faster than the speed of air conduction, which can increase the clarity of sound, this also leads to the separation, reduction and sound quality of Shokz Shaoyin headphones to music are slightly lower than that of traditional headphones.
Shokz Shaoyin headphones use PremiumPitch2.0 technology to improve sound quality, but from the perspective of consumer experience, Shokz Shaoyin headphones are still better than lower-priced in-ear music headphones in terms of sound quality. This has led to Shokz Shaoyin headphones directly dissuading consumer groups that pursue high sound quality.
Again, bone conduction headphones are born without a leak-proof gene. Although bone conduction headphones can transmit sound to the auditory nerve center and clearly transmit sound through the skull to the inner ear, their vocalization process cannot always be close to the skull.
From the principle of sound propagation, if the sound unit and the skin have a very small distance, it will cause air vibration at the gap, and then produce sound leakage, although Shokz Shaoyin headphones use The Peak slayer anti-leakage technology, which can play a certain sound inversion elimination effect, but the sound leakage problem is ultimately a native scientific and technological gene problem, which can only be optimized and cannot be avoided.
Shokz shaoyin function and experience are difficult to combine
"Water resistance and sweat resistance, acoustic optimization" is Shaoyin's consistent advantage area, which can only ensure that the open run pro headphones are difficult to meet in the bone conduction headphones. But with this one selling point alone, it may not be enough to develop more potential users. Shokz Shaoyin headphones have always been praised for their iteration speed in the product, but in terms of product functions and user experience, Shokz Shaoyin Technology still needs to work hard.
Image source: Shokz Shaoyin Technology official website screenshot
First, from the perspective of product functions, the convenience of human-computer interaction operation is not high. As the latest flagship grade bone conduction headphone in 2022, Shaoyin Open Run Pro realizes more than a dozen functions of the product through "volume-", "volume +" and "multi-function key".
Compared with the same type of high-end professional sports headphones, Shaoyin Open Run Pro is indeed very rich in product functions. However, the excessive pursuit of functional richness, on the other hand, also increases the difficulty of human-computer interaction.
Many functions such as long press, triple hit or press two buttons at the same time to achieve, which requires users to spend more learning costs, but the use of some functions in the sports scene is not high, it seems a bit flashy. Consumers on shokz Shaoyin Technology Tmall flagship store suggest that functions such as adjusting EQ, checking power, and muting can be considered for optimization design.
In addition, as the headset function increases, it is bound to reduce its battery life. Therefore, Open Run Pro introduced flash charging technology to deal with the battery life problem after the function upgrade. But Shaoyin Open Run Pro's claim that "5 minutes of charging, you can use 90 minutes, charging 30 minutes, listening for 6 hours" may be a bit exaggerated.
Because this battery life data data comes from Shaoyin Professional Laboratory, the AAC coded audio test is played at 75% volume in iOS14 mobile phone devices, and there is no large-scale sample reference, so there is no strong persuasion. At the same time, compared with the charging compartment charging of true wireless headphones, Open Run Pro's Type-C plug charging method is not easy to compare.
Second, from the perspective of use safety, whether it is more secure may be a false proposition. Due to the proximity of the headset to the ear, the continuous vibration of the ear bonelets can also damage the auditory hair cells during use. At this point, bone conduction headphones and general headphones are not much different, the so-called "Shokz Shaoyin Technology bone conduction headphones will not damage hearing" such a statement, may just be Shokz Shaoyin Technology product marketing gimmick.
Third, from the perspective of comfort, Shokz Shaoyin does not have obvious advantages. Shokz Shaoyin open run pro headphones use aviation aluminum grade materials, to a certain extent, can maintain its light posture, but compared to the traditional sports headphones in their own weight is still not dominant, will still give users a certain sense of weight.
Shaoyin Open Run Pro is loaded with Premium pitch 2.0 technology, the vibration direction of the bone guide speaker relative to the face is changed from vertical to inclined to an angle, from vertically hitting the face to rubbing the face at a certain inclination, but this can only reduce the user's sense of vibration, with the larger range of movement of the body, the bone part clamped by the headphones is bound to produce a significant sense of oppression.
In order to enhance the sound quality and reduce the sound noise, shaoyin Open Run Pro is equipped with Shokz TurboPitc low-frequency enhancement technology, and the coreCushion low-frequency enhancement unit is added to make the bass dive deeper. However, if the user adds the input volume, the vibration of its sounding parts is larger, and the vibration sensation will be more obvious in the case of long-term wear, and the additional pressure caused by the sound unit on the head is still unavoidable.
Shokz Shaoyin should pursue high-end or popularity
Shokz Shaoyin Technology has applied for more than 1400 patents at present, and years of hard work have indeed made Shokz Shaoyin Technology deepen its own moat in terms of product technology. However, it is worth noting that many of Shokz Shaoyin Technology's brands are registered in the United States, but in China, they are marketed under the name of "domestic technology curve overtaking".
In today's people's willingness to consume domestic goods continues to strengthen, the "local" Origin Shokz Shaoyin Technology plays the edge of the "domestic technology" such a brush ball is indeed beyond reproach, but if Shokz Shaoyin Technology has a brand crisis in the future, this "careful thinking" may become its huge hidden danger.
Image source: Shokz Shaoyin Technology Tmall flagship store screenshot
Under the blessing of science and technology, Shokz Shaoyin Technology has increased its revenue by more than 50 times in the past 5 years, although the data is eye-catching, but the domestic bone conduction headphone market has just started 5 years ago, the market share at that time was extremely low, and the gold content of 50 times growth may not be high.
At present, the bone conduction headset industry maintains the market pattern of South Carolina and Shaoyin. According to the survey report of Canalys, an international authoritative research institution, Shaoyin Technology ranks second in the industry with a market share of 33%. In 2021, global shipments of bone conduction headphones reached 8.83 million units, an increase of 97% month-on-month, which proves that bone conduction headphones are indeed a blue ocean market.
Another data shows that the mid-end products of bone conduction headphones have the highest attention in the market, and 52.3% of consumers are more inclined to mid-range products of 600 yuan to 1200 yuan, an increase of 106% month-on-month. High-end products above 1,000 yuan only accounted for 33.5% of the market share, an increase of 53% month-on-month. It is not difficult to find that the sales growth rate of mid-end products is about 2 times that of high-end products.
Shaoyin Technology seems to be a bit "against the trend", and its products are mainly concentrated in high-end models. For example, the Tmall flagship store of running sports headphones Open Run Pro is priced at 1298 yuan, the OpenSwim bone conduction waterproof swimming headphones are priced at 1198 yuan, and the best selling is the Open Run Move at 598 yuan.
Shokz Shaoyin in the first quarter of 2022 main OpenRun pro, using Shaoyin's TurboPitch technology and dual transducer technology, technology blessing, the price is high, which also confirms Shokz Shaoyin's ambition to be a high-end sports brand. However, under the premise that bone conduction headphones are not yet fully mature in the domestic market, the overpricing of Shaoyin Technology seems to be a bit risky.
Taking a step back, in view of the relatively niche bone conduction headphone products themselves, at the moment when the domestic market education work still needs to be deepened, Shokz Shaoyin Technology is pursuing corporate profit space by increasing the price of products at this moment, which is slightly hasty. Perhaps it will be safer to wait until the market for bone conduction is more mature and then focus on "high-end".
At present, the domestic bone conduction headset market is not mature enough, most consumers have a half-understanding of the principle of bone conduction, higher market prices will reduce consumers' willingness to consume to a certain extent, at present, Shokz Shaoyin Technology if it can appropriately launch some cost-effective mid-range new products to broaden the popularity of products, may be a better way to reduce the cost of future user education.
epilogue
Although the current headphone products of Shaoyin Technology are not perfect, the market size of bone conduction headphones will maintain a rising trend in the future, which is good news for Shokz Shaoyin Technology.
With the continuous innovation of Shaoyin in acoustic technology, it is entirely possible for Shokz Shaoyin Technology to continue to improve product form and functional characteristics in the future. It is believed that Shokz Shaoyin Technology, which cultivates the "sound" in the bone conduction headphone movement scene, will inevitably provide a better experience for more sports enthusiasts in the future.