Take an existing product in the market, offer a unique design of quality and a user-friendly and simple interface for everyone. Apple products simply work. On the other hand, their level of success turns their products into cultural icons. They will remember the advertising campaigns that only showed silhouettes listening to music with white cables. No need to show more than those cables everyone knew it was an iPod.
Fifteen years later, Apple introduces AirPods, its wireless headphones. Again, they were not the first to introduce this type of hearing aids, similar ones already existed in the market, but they were the first to offer a quality design and a simple and robust user experience. With the current versions of Bluetooth it is not possible to transmit to two devices at the same time, this requires that the headphones “True Wireless”, which in addition to having no cable to the device do not have it between them, to synchronize the music of a headset to the other. This creates multiple interference problems and failures. The AirPods minimized these problems.
Introduced to the market at a price of $ 159, very rare at Apple, they were not the most expensive product on the market and by their standards, it was considered, even “cheap.”
At the beginning they were criticized for their strange form and for looking too much like their EarPods, their wired version, critics said they had only cut their wires.
This was quickly forgotten after selling more than 14 million units in 2017, and in 2018 at least 35 million. To date, Apple has sold more than 50 million units and is estimated to have more than 50% of the wireless hearing aid market. Of course, now the advertising campaigns began to show models contorting and dancing with two white sticks in their ears and another cultural phenomenon was born, this time with a size that few imagine.
To get an idea of its market size, if the AirPods were a separate company, 50 million units sold at $ 159 are $ 8 billion, that would be equivalent to the 384th Fortune 500 company, above Motorola and AMD. The growth in sales is 50% per year and although at the moment its contribution is less than 4% of Apple’s total revenues, its diversification strategy is going well afterwards, especially considering that the AirPods have had a triggering effect on the rest of Apple’s “Wearables”.
Last October Apple launched its new AirPods Pro model, smaller, with noise cancellation technology, this is the ability to filter sounds from outside. This is achieved with a pair of microphones (one out and one in) that measure and adapt to ambient noise 200 times per second. They are not the best headphones in this aspect, but the smallest with this technology. With the cancellation activated, the AirPods lose only 30 m of battery compared to the previous model which is impressive. Without activation they last the same, but with a considerably smaller size. The AirPods pro cost $ 249 and already include the case with wireless charging.
Last December the AirPods were on all the most desired gift lists and before Christmas they were already sold out until January. Only on “Black Friday and Cyber Monday” it is estimated that they sold at least 3 million units.
The AirPods are the second best-selling Apple product in history and the fastest growing today, and certainly, they are a status and symbol for the “Millennials and Centennials” generations.
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