Apple Removed Headphone Jack From New iPhones Because It Owns Largest Bluetooth Headphone Company (theverge.com)

Apple's new iPhones -- the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus -- don't have the headphone jack. The company's SVP Phil Schiller said the move signifies "courage" from the company to put a 100-year-old audio standard to bed. But there could be one more reason for this transition to a Bluetooth/Wireless headphones future: it owns the largest Bluetooth headphones company -- Beats. The Verge reports: More likely is that the lack of a headphone jack on the iPhone -- and increasingly, on Android phones as well -- will lead to an uptick in sales of Bluetooth headphones. And it just so happens that Apple owns the number one Bluetooth headphone company, Beats. Beats brings in more revenue from Bluetooth headphones than LG, Bose, or Jaybird, according to NPD figures released in July. In terms of unit sales, it controls over a quarter of the Bluetooth headphone market. Bluetooth headphones are also disproportionately profitable among headphones. NPD has them accounting for 54 percent of all dollars spent in the market, despite representing only 17 percent of units sold in the U.S.. These headphones sell at high prices with high margins, and Apple's company is making the best of it so far. Sales of Bluetooth headphones are already growing, with units up 64 percent year over year according to NPD's US figures. And Apple's removal of the headphone jack is likely to give them another boost.

Comments

Apple is trying to make money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gasp! It's like...everything they do is about making more money! I never realized!

Re:Apple is trying to make money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah and they sure don't let ethics get in the way either.

Re:Apple is trying to make money?

[HornWumpus]

Beats was just a perfect fit for apple.

Crap product at premium price...what's not to love?

Re:Apple is trying to make money?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they bought Beats because Beats is _exactly_ the same style of business that Apple is and a perfect match. They make high-margin pieces of shit electronics which command high prices because they're fashion accessories.

Re:Apple is trying to make money?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called courage now.

Re:Apple is trying to make money?

[thegarbz]

Apple likely bought Beats because they were planning to remove the audio jack

You have a very short memory. The purchase of Beats had zero to do with headphones and everything to do with buying an active music streaming service adding something they were missing while simultaneously removing a competitor in the industry.

You don't pay $3bn on a set of crappy bluetooth headphones when you already produce headphones of your own and already have partnerships with companies who also provide Apple dedicated audio equipment. You sure as hell don't run a business with the thought that "hey in 2 years we're are going to do something incredibly stupid, very unpopular, something that will get us grilled from every corner of the tech presses, maybe we should figure out a way to make money of this dumb idea too!"

Re:Apple is trying to make money?

[fahrbot-bot]

I don't think it could be much smaller, Maybe a little shorter, but then the contacts are closer together and it will be more picky about the plug fitting exactly. It can't be much smaller in diameter since humans have to get it in the hole and a smaller hole is harder to hit unless you're concentrating on it, I can plug the headphones into my phone without looking ...

Oh... headphones. I wasn't sure where you were going with this. I was thinking: worse pick-up line ever...

Re:Apple is trying to make money?

[LynnwoodRooster]

There are much thinner phones on the market today that use a full-size 3.5mm jack (Vivo X3S is 6mm, Huawei Ascend P3 is around 6.18mm, and the Gionee ELife S7 at 5.5mm, for example). And the volume occupied by the jack MIGHT allow something around 50-70 mAhr of more battery - about enough to run that Bluetooth radio for an hour or so - meaning if you listen to Bluetooth headphones for more than an hour you're down on total operational time as you continue to consume more power than if you just had a wired headphone.

Upgrade your iPhone 6 to an iPhone 7

[Anonymous Coward]

With one of these: http://appleplugs.com/

Re:Not Causal

[Sable Drakon]

Too bad there aren't any affordable and good sounding bluetooth headphones. The DAC in most BT headphones are shittier than the ones in smartphones, the audo fidelity is worse, and the compression required to use AADP further degrades audio reproduction. Apple just wants to sell people on a shittier experience and force them to like it. 3.5mm headphones sound better, they're cheaper, they're more compatible, and they don't introduce compression artifacts. So on this, Apple can get fucked.

Re:Not Causal

[JamesTRexx]

Don't forget to mention with a simple piece of wiring between phone and speakers there's no need to replace batteries or have to recharge the earbuds often.
Sounds more environmentally responsible too.

No benefit other than losing the cord

[Bruce Perens]

Headphones, and your ears, are analog. The signal gets converted from digital to analog before you can hear it, and is amplified. So, do you want to use the amplifier in the phone, which has a nice big battery and a powerful amplifier that can also drive the speaker, and that can easily dissipate any heat from the amplifier, or the amplifier in your headphone, which if it's an in-ear one is going to have limitations regarding the battery and the amplifier.

It is not even theoretically possible for a Bluetooth headphone to make better sound. At best, it's the same. The only benefit is that you lose the cord.

This was an astonishingly cynical move and I hope that Apple loses customers over it.

Re:No benefit other than losing the cord

[Bruce Perens]

I'd be with you if this was RF wiring. But at 20 kilohertz maximum (which you won't hear past teenage), no way. The resistance is not significant, the capacitance is not significant, the headphone wire is not acting as a transmission line in any relevant way at that length and frequency, the way it would at RF. If it were acting as a transmission line, what you say would make sense.

Those folks who are selling you oxygen-free copper wires and other forms of guilding the lily are depending on your psychological expectation that things will sound better, just as your car might seem to run better after you give it a good shine.

umm, unlikely

[real gumby]

I think the largest bluetooth headset seller is some anonymous company in China. The cheap BT headsets you can see on Amazon or Alibaba mostly all look the same, so I suspect are just barely-rebadged versions of the same thing. And surely their volume collectively exceed the sum of Beats, Bose and (never heard of them) Jaybird. And by "volume" I don't just mean units, but as the unit number is so enormous, I also mean dollars.

As for their actual motivations etc...whatever.

Re:I don't get the fuss

[hyades1]

I bet you just love the way Apple knows you're so cool and tech savvy you'll never need to choose between charging your phone and listening to music.

And the convenience of having a pair of headphones that work on just about any device anywhere in the world capable of producing sound kind of sucks, too.

Re:Not Causal

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Don't forget to mention with a simple piece of wiring between phone and speakers there's no need to replace batteries or have to recharge the earbuds often.

Shhhhhhhhh, don't mess with their business model!

Also, what happens when the batteries degrade to where they're no longer any good? You get to buy a new pair (yippee!) or pay to have them repaired/replaced (yippee!).

The worst part? The sewers will be filled with these as they fall out and go bouncing off into the gutter, sewer, toilet, heating vent, tall grass, etc etc. Stick your head out the window? Whoops, there they go. Lose one on a beach or out in the woods? Good luck finding it.

I can't count the number of times that the wires have kept me from losing an earbud.

And no, you probably won't be able to buy just a left or a right...because that would just be wrong. You'll have to buy both, leaving you with a extra, completely useless one. If they get mixed up at a party or whatever and you end up with two right-side units somehow, well, too bad for you. But hey, they're only another $160 bucks per pair, so stop whining!

Next up for sale: the Apple "iTether", a pair of sturdy white wires that attach to the earbuds so they don't get lost when you drop them. BRILLIANT!

Re:I don't get the fuss

[ZipK]

Like a lot of technologies, people cling to it because it's familiar, unchanged, simple.

Wired headphones never need to be recharged. That is vastly more important to me on a day-to-day basis than dealing with a cord, which has never really been a problem.

And Beats.. Really?

[thesupraman]

And the most impressive part is how completely, utterly terrible Beats headphones actually are!
Really, go and try some reasonable Sennheiser, Koss, AKG, Pioneer, hell even Sony...

Beats are just plain out terrible, especially for the money.
But then owners are not buying sound are they, ts all about a stylized 'b' on the ears...

The number of people I have donated older Sennheiser phones to who have then given away their
much more expensive Beats amazes me. PX200 for travel, HD280Pro for home. both cheap 2nd hand.

But, yes the move by apple is rather transparent.
#1, take attention off the lack of other improvements in the 7 by doing something controversial.
#2, improve Beats/Apple profit by gouging the fanbase even more.

It seems thats what passes for innovation these days - that and crying over un(fairly)paid tax being called in.
Sad, really.