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Wireless Headphone Sales Soared After Apple Dropped Headphone Jack (fortune.com)
Apple's decision to remove the headphone jack from new iPhones last year prompted lots of consumers to switch to wireless headphones, according to a new report on holiday shopping. From a report: Three-quarters of all headphones sold online in December were wireless models, up from 50% a year earlier, according to shopping tracker Slice Intelligence. Apple was the biggest beneficiary of the shift, as both its new AirPods earphones and models from its Beats subsidiary led the sales charts. The $159 AirPods, Apple's first wireless model sold under its own brand, didn't go on sale until Dec. 13, but the product quickly dominated the wireless headphone market, Slice found. In the year prior to the debut, the Beats brand topped online sales of wireless models with a 24% market share, trailed by Bose with an 11% share and Jaybird at 8%. But after AirPods went on sale, they grabbed 26% of online wireless sales, Slice found. Bose was second at 16% and Beats dropped to third with 15% of the market during the period considered.
Why is this a story?
If there is no headphone jack, buying traditional headphones would be pretty dumb. Any outcome other than an increase in wireless headphone sales would have been very unusual.
No thanks. The wire on wired headphones has never been a problem, and adding one more thing to my kit that needs recharging is undesirable. As is a dongle. As are earphones that aren't plug-compatible with airline entertainment and other phone-jack systems.
Bluetooth headsets are hardly "innovation" at this point and adding an incompatible proprietary chip "the W1 - oh, the courage" isn't good for anyone either. BT audio isn't good. It stutters, stumbles, pops, and cracks - even with "good" headsets. If they want to innovate - either fix BT audio or come up with some new standard as part of an open standards body and be the first to ship an implementation of that.
Despite all the whining on Slashdot, this will advance Bluetooth audio, driving lower cost for headphones and encouraging innovation to improve sound quality. Apple got this right, and the increase in sales proves it. Complain if you must, but Apple is still driving innovation while other companies prefer to keep the status quo.
No, this is not an "advancement". Recompressing compressed audio is not a good thing. Real audio is dying and so called innovators like Apple is accelerating it.
I absolutely loathe lossy compressed audio. I can't stand it. High frequencies sound like shit. Cymbals are garbled beyond recognition. It's worse than vinyl records with their RIAA equalization.
From iPhone 7 Tech Specs
They didn't sell many lightning cables before Apple made it a standard either.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
In case no one noticed Apple bought Beats audio, who controls pretty much the entire wireless headphone market. Fast forward a year or so and now Apple ONLY sells devices that can use wireless headphones in their most popular product.
Do any of you Apple fanatics NOT see that Apple screwed you by removing a port and FORCING you into the wireless headphone market they own most of? Personally t's this kind of CRAP from Apple that made me completely abandon that entire eco-system years ago.
Tim Cook deserves a "Profiles in Courage" award.
Removing the headphone jack was annoying and regressive; on that we can agree. Samsung is likely to remove it to the S8, in response to Apple, and that makes it all the more frustrating.
Beats are crap. I refuse to buy any of those headphones. I got a pair as a gift for Christmas--wireless, natch--and I haven't taken the shrink wrap off. I intend to sell it.
I bought Jaybirds years before Apple removed the jack. They work great, but they're not perfect. So I'm not sure where you're coming from when you say that Beats controls the wireless headphone market. People have been buying other brands long before the iPhone 7.
Apple has very clearly lost its way, but it's not like their acquisition of Beats and removal of the headphone jack was planned specifically so that they would force adoption of hideous and overpriced wireless pieces of shit. Well, at least I don't think that's the case.
You can plug in your old headphones using the adapter they include in the box (and sell replacements for $9), or you can use the wired Lightning Cable EarPods they also... include in the box. Heck, they sell replacements for those too.
I get that you're mad but your assertion that you can ONLY use wireless headphones is false in more ways than one.
And as for being mad that they bought a wireless headphone company and then did something to encourage usage of wireless headphones? That just says you don't understand how hardware companies work. Especially if you don't think every other phone manufacturer isn't about to do the same.
Schnapple
"Sales of dongles soar after Apple removes MacBook Pro ports"
I can see what's next:
"Sales of external battery packs soar after Apple eliminates batteries from all products to make them 2 mm thinner"
"Sales of wireless keyboards soar after Apple removes keyboard from MacBooks to make them 1 mm thinner"
"Sales of trackpads, displays, and logic boards soar after Apple announces new MacBook Pro is an empty cardboard box; calls it 'our most innovative and courageous product ever'"
Do any of you Apple fanatics NOT see that Apple screwed you by removing a port and FORCING you into the wireless headphone market they own most of?
Just give up the argument. There are those who have bought into the Apple "mystique" and those who haven't. To the former, it will always be "But Apple is being BOLD, moving on to new tech!" To the latter, like you, there will always be the most cynical interpretation, where everything is about profits...
Walled-garden. Sealing the case shut and choosing to solder every component directly to the fucking chassis, destroying the 3rd party market for upgrades. Making damn near every external connection proprietary, requiring the purchase of some form of patented adapter. Removing the headphone jack, leading to a boost in sales of yet another product line (Beats) they now own.
It hardly takes a cynic to understand that every move they make is about profits.
Give up the argument? There's none to be had. Not even the iLemmings can dismiss the blatant motives of a company who has unabashedly made hundreds of billions in profits in a obscenely short amount of time, driven by arrogant Take-It-And-Like-It designs.
Unless someone starts producing ads like that, this Apple crap will have no chance of stopping. In a few years, we'll have dongles upon dongles just to use a 5-year-old computer with a new Apple device.
While it's a cute idea for an ad for the competition, you don't understand that all vendors will soon follow the Apple profit model. Their Boards will practically demand it, so in a few short years, every computing device will look like the Apple product line, each of them complete with their own patented and proprietary designs and interfaces, all driven by the same profit model.