Sold or shipped? That's the big question, since different companies use different metrics and it's clearly visible that some brands flood the market, later selling the products with big discounts - as this latest Black Friday revealed in abundance. According to the latest Canalys estimates, the global smart personal audio market (a description that theoretically includes all entertainment products that target our ears) registered 113.6 million units shipped in Q3, 2022. Given that this is not the strongest quarter, this would point at 580 units shipped by the end of the year.
If we look around on the Internet we can find many disparaged figures, from 1 to 1.3 billion units SOLD per year (2021 - multiple sources, including the completely unreliable Statista website) to 548 million headphones SHIPPED worldwide (Futuresource). We would need to know exactly what was considered in "headphones" in these projected figures.
What we know is that Apple/Beats is dominating the space in market share for premium TWS categories (and leading in revenue - https://audioxpress.com/news/second-generation-airpods-pro-launch-expands-apple-market-share-in-the-global-tws-market), while all the other leading brands are ferociously disputing each price segment creating a very fragmented, competitive environment - particularly when it comes to the still growing TWS category. When we look specifically at true wireless earbuds with smart features or hearables, we see projections (Hearables’ Shipments to Exceed 200 Million Globally by 2024, Juniper Research Predicts) that are considerable but are difficult to weigh up given the disparity of numbers that are said to represent the overall market.
It is therefore important to have some of the large companies that are globally recognized to reveal their own sales volumes. And that's precisely what happened with Harman/JBL, which has claimed sales of 200 Million units of all its headphone categories since 2016. As Harman states, the flourishing headphone market is seeing unprecedented global demand and the JBL brand as cemented its position as "category growth leader and #1 audio brand in volume."
"The convergence of a thriving headphone market, global demand for high-quality audio, and JBL’s exceptional ability to understand and anticipate customer needs has propelled JBL past the threshold of 200 million headphone units sold. JBL is the world's leading designer, manufacturer, and marketer of professional loudspeakers and studio monitors for musicians, tours, cinema, and recording & broadcasting applications; it leverages these credentials in the consumer headphones category, producing high-quality products that only a true audio company can deliver," the company states to characterize this "booming market."
According also to the company's release, "Since 2020, demand for headphones has soared, driven by major new trends arising from the pandemic, such as increased HD music streaming, an uptake of in-gaming music consumption and podcasts, home-based work and teleconferencing, and even sports and biometrics uses. This unprecedented momentum is evident not only in industry forecasts predicting market growth at a CAGR of 17.6% between now and 2028, but also in JBL’s remarkable results: in addition to the milestone of 200 million headphone units sold, JBL’s Headphones division surpassed Sony in volume share in Q2, making JBL the #1 audio brand in volume in the overall headphone market and #2 after Apple."
JBL has enriched the headphone space with many mid- and low-price products since it entered the consumer headphones category in 2016. Harman had a strange understanding of the brands it owns, and for some unexplained motive used "JBL" as its "popular" brand, relegating AKG (which would be a natural choice for headphones) to a secondary position. Chief among JBL’s latest headphone releases is the JBL Tour PRO 2, which Harman hopes will reinvigorate sales in the lucrative TWS ANC space, featuring true adaptive noise-cancelling technology a smart charging case with a 1.45"-inch LED touch display.
www.harman.com
www.jbl.com
