The wireless headphone market has steadily grown over the past year, new data from research firm Slice Intelligence suggests.
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In the U.S. last month, an estimated 75% of revenue from headphones sold online came from wireless models, up from 50% in December 2015, according to Slice Intelligence. Apple's new AirPods led the way, capturing an estimated 26% share of online revenue in the wireless headphone market since launching on December 13.
AirPods stole the top spot from Beats, which took an estimated 15.4% of online revenue in the wireless headphone market, down from 24.1% between the start of 2015 and December 13. Given it owns Beats, Apple appears to have actually taken nearly 40% of online revenue in the market since launching AirPods.
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Slice Intelligence said wireless headphone spending on AirPods launch day was ten times greater than the pre-holiday average for 2016. December 13 was also the largest single day of online headphone spending last year, according to the research firm, topping Amazon Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday.
The research suggests 85% of shoppers who purchased AirPods are male, of which 35% are young millennials. Female buyers tended to skew older, with 38% falling in the baby boomer generation. The gender data is based on 2,871 U.S. online shoppers who purchased AirPods between December 13 and December 31.
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Apple has not disclosed AirPods sales, with CEO Tim Cook only vaguely claiming the wireless headphones have been a "runaway success" amid "a great holiday" period. AirPods remain estimated to ship in 6 weeks in the U.S. as Apple said it is working to fulfill orders as fast as possible.
Slice Intelligence aggregated its data based on anonymized e-receipts from up to 353,926 U.S. online shoppers—the size of the user base varies per chart. But without official figures, it is impossible to determine if the data is accurate—Apple could easily follow up with very different numbers.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)Actually now that I think of it, I don't even think it have any Apple Logo
You create a nice product, people will buy it.
This doesn't actually look great... Apple owns Beats. So they cannibalized their own sales, but the real winner was Bose. Their segment of the market increased during this same time period. Not much to celebrate if you're Apple.
A quarter of all online sales within a month of releasing a brand-new product in a category they've never entered? Not much to celebrate?! By golly, you naysayers are incredibly deluded. Any other company would give their figurative right arm for sales like this.Let me absolutely assure you: if Microsoft had bought Beats and if Microsoft had released a wireless headphone that was even half as successful as this, you'd be the same person saying that Apple dropped the ball, and Cook has the foresight of a mole wearing a blindfold.
These are staggering sales numbers.
It's also long past time for the many pundits who criticized the Beats deal to acknowledge that it was an ingenious acquisition. Everybody focused on the streaming aspects, itself worthwhile, but most didn't realize the enormous value in the headphone business. Whatever you think of the audio quality of the Beats, they are enormously profitable based on markup and sales volume. From that perspective alone, Apple got a bargain and Apple is now the largest seller of wireless headphones in the world, and they have over 60% of the world wide market for premium headphones. Kudos to Tim Cook for his business acumen in this purchase.
you're not allowed to say anything positive about Tim Cook around these parts.