Headphones continue to dominate the headphone market and products such as the Bowers & Wilkins PX7 (see picture) are popular solutions for CE Pros. A newly released study finds headphones dominate audio equipment unit shipments with no end in sight for the category’s dominance.
The study from SAR Insight & Consulting called “Headphone and Headset Forecast DATAbase” estimates that 365 million headphones will ship in 2019.
“The headphone market continues to be one of the most interesting for IC, component and IP vendors,” states Peter Cooney, research director of SAR Insight & Consulting.
“With high volumes and developments that are driving the increased use of advanced technologies, it is certainly one of the main markets to watch.”
Taking a closer look at some of the developments within the headphone category, SAR Insight & Consulting’s data concludes that consumers are overwhelmingly choosing the benefits of Bluetooth to untether themselves from their smart devices and computers:
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- Wireless headphones now account for approximately 70% of headphone shipments
- “True” wireless stereo earbuds are disrupting the headphone category and shipments of these products continue to grow
- The shipment of gaming headphones have nearly doubled over the past two years
- “In-the-box” headphones, or the products bundled with smart devices are losing popularity as original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) look to cut production costs
From a manufacturing perspective, SAR Insight & Consulting notes that headphones have become the second-largest user of all MEMS (Electret Condenser Microphones) microphones shipped in 2019 after the smart-phone companies.
The company adds that the long-term prognosis of the headphone market also looks positive. The market is growing, and as manufacturers continue to advance their products, headphones will continue to dominate audio product sales over the next several years.
CE Pros Choose Trusted Headphone Brands
Focusing specifically on the specialty and custom installation markets, CE Pro revealed in its annual 2019 Brand Analysis report that the Top 100 integration companies prefer to use familiar, trusted headphone companies.
The Brand Analysis finds that for the past couple of years Sennheiser has been the most preferred “go-to” brand for integrators, followed closely by Sony.
Rounding out the five most frequently used brands by integrators are Bowers & Wilkins, Bose and Klipsch.
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