Recently, Canalys, a well-known institution, released the global TWS earphone market in the first quarter of 2024.
As shown in the figure below, Apple took the first place with a 25% share, followed by Xiaomi, Samsung, BoAt, and Huawei, and the top five brands won nearly 50% of the share.
Among them, Xiaomi grew by 61%, Samsung by 3%, Huawei by 13%, and Apple by 8%.
What is TWS? In fact, it is the abbreviation of True Wireless Stereo in English, which translates to true wireless stereo, which is the familiar wireless Bluetooth headset.
In fact, the most familiar TWS earphones are Apple's Airpods, and similar products, not only Apple, Xiaomi, Samsung, Huawei, etc., all after Apple launched Airpods, learn from Apple to launch similar products, and the whole market is currently in a scuffle.
In fact, before Apple launched Airpods, mobile phone manufacturers had no sense of presence in Bluetooth headsets, and those who sold headphones were well-known professional sound brands, such as BOSE, Sony, Sennheiser, etc.
As for mobile phone manufacturers, at most, in the mobile phone, with a 3.5mm interface of wired headphones, maybe this pair of headphones is still the OEM provided by these professional headphone brands, mobile phone manufacturers themselves may not make headphones.
But the turning point was in 2016, when Apple directly cut the 3.5mm connector when the iPhone 7 was released, and the whole phone only had a lightning connector. At the same time, at the launch of the iPhone7, the wireless headphones Apple AirPods were launched for the first time.
Apple's purpose is very simple, that is, to cut off the dedicated earphone jack and let users buy TWS earphones as much as possible to use.
So an era that belongs to TWS began, once Airpods were launched, they were on sale, and at the peak, Apple won 80%+ share of the entire TWS market, because Airpods were so cool, compared with other brands of Bluetooth headphones at that time, it could be called a dimensionality reduction blow.
After seeing the popularity of Apple's airpods, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and other domestic mobile phone manufacturers have crossed the river with Apple and launched similar products, Huawei is taking the high-end route, and Xiaomi is taking the low-end route.
Relying on the already very large mobile phone market share of these mobile phone manufacturers, as well as brand appeal and influence, everyone's headset sales are getting higher and higher, and by 2024, Xiaomi has surpassed Samsung and become the second in the world, and Huawei has also entered the top five in the world.
According to the data of the agency, the current annual sales of TWS earphones in the world are as high as about 250 million pairs, and Xiaomi has won 8% of the share, which is equivalent to 20 million pairs, and Huawei has a 3% share, which is also equivalent to a year of sales of 7.5 million pairs, and this sales volume corresponds to billions of revenues.
If Apple hadn't cut the 3.5mm headphone jack in 2016, if it wasn't for Apple's launch of Airpods, maybe Xiaomi and Huawei would not have launched TWS earphones, and they wouldn't have been able to get these sales, what do you think?
So Apple cut off the 3.5mm headphone jack, which is good for Apple, but at the same time, Xiaomi and Huawei have also won and opened up a new market.