The development and trend of the headset industry in 2019

By jan.jiang@dgbosta.com Jul ,23, 2019

In 2019, it has quietly entered July, andhalf a year has passed. For the earphone industry, this year's developmentdirection can be said to be unexpected, but in terms of speed, it may exceedthe imagination of many people. For the headset industry, in fact, it is movingtoward a more subdivided product category, whether it is TWS headphones, sportsheadphones or noise canceling headphones, gaming headphones, the totalattention and crowds of these products are increasing, and here In the past sixmonths, many products have also been updated and iterated, and graduallyimprove the experience that the product brings to users. First of all, we willfirst summarize the changes in the headsets for different positioning purposesin the first half of 2019 according to different product categories.

The first thing that needs to be counted isthe true wireless TWS type of earphone products. This is the earphone categorythat developed rapidly last year and this year. Since Apple officially releasedAirpods, the headset industry has officially entered the all-wireless era. In2018, a large number of brands began. The introduction of all-wireless headsetproducts, but because of the delay of Bluetooth-related solutions and chiptechnology, most of the wireless headsets except Apple Airpods can not bring avery good user experience. In the first half of 2019, with the update of the newall-wireless solution and the addition of such giants as Qualcomm, theexperience of true wireless headsets is getting closer and closer to theexperience of Apple Airpods.

In the last two or three years, theattention of sports headphones has also shown an upward trend. With more andmore consumers, more consumers will also use sports headphones as anindispensable part of their sports equipment. section. In addition to thetraditional sports headphones, the emerging earphone categories such as all-wirelessheadphones and bone conduction headphones also make the sports earphonessub-category have a better experience and choice in the use experience andtargeted sports scenes.

Noise-reducing headphones have beenmonopolized by several international brands for a long time, and in the pasttwo years, more and more domestic brands have begun to launch their ownnoise-reducing earphone products, and with the hardware configuration anddomestic manufacturers' precision for noise reduction algorithms. Now, thenoise reduction headphones of Chinese brands have begun to have a very goodnoise reduction experience, and they also have higher cost performance in termsof price. Now consumers no longer need to spend more than 1,000 yuan to buynoise-reducing headphones. In the camp of excellent brands, hundreds of dollarscan already buy quite good products.

The game headset got a huge explosion atthe end of 2017 because of the popularity of the game "JesusSurvival", and with the rise of mobile phone chicken and king glory,portable Bluetooth gaming headsets also opened up a new market, but after 18The precipitation of the year and the lack of new explosion games in the gameindustry during the 19-year period, the popularity of gaming headphones hasalso shown a certain downward trend. But compared with 17 years, it still has asubstantial growth, and all the traditional headphones brands have begun tolaunch their own game headset series to catch up with this wave of enthusiasm.

For HiFi headphones, the overall number ofearphone enthusiasts has increased over the years, but the price of theproducts is getting higher and higher. Now the flagship earphones are alreadyvery regular operations, and even many products have already crossed 20,000yuan. Even the 30,000 yuan mark. The player industry is relatively calmer. Theplayer products that have already crossed the 20,000-yuan mark have not seenany more expensive products. Sony’s 60,000-yuan player has actually quietlylowered the price to the transaction price of 30,000 to 40,000. . However, withthe increase in the price, in recent years, with the emergence of moreexcellent sounding units, the sound performance of HiFi products has indeedcome to a new level, but the price is also rising. The traditional high-qualityearphone brand has begun to gradually introduce its products into the Bluetoothversion. As the mobile phone cancels the headset port, the high-end HiFiheadset also begins to approach the Bluetooth wireless connection mode, and allof this will also be played on the traditional. The market has a certain impact.

For the headset industry in the second halfof the year, we will mainly see three major product categories undergoing majorchanges, one of which is actually a merger, that is, TWS noise reductionheadphones will appear more, and the other is the traditional HiFi earplugs.Types of products we will see more Bluetooth products appear.

For the TWS true wireless headset, theQualcomm 3 series solution introduced in the first half of the year has alreadymade the traditional TWS true wireless headset have a very large experienceimprovement in terms of experience and battery life, and it is expected to havea higher-end Qualcomm 5 series solution in the second half of the year. A largesupply will be available to various earphone manufacturers, and the biggestfeature of the five-series solution is that it also has a noise reductionalgorithm in the case of true wireless, and because of the low-powerperformance of the 3-series solution, it can be implemented in the 5-seriessolution. When the wireless headset is turned on for noise reduction, there isstill no endurance of the wireless headset that was once too mature, which isvery worth looking forward to.

The other is the traditional HiFi earphoneindustry. Since last year, Haston and Shure have started to bundle their ownflagship products with Bluetooth cables or directly Bluetoothize theirproducts. In this year, Baiya will also launch its Bluetooth version of itsblueprint. In the second half of the year, we believe that we will see moreBluetooth products in the top earphones. With the development of Bluetoothtechnology, whether it is bandwidth, delay or high Under the blessing of thesound quality Bluetooth protocol, the sound quality of the Bluetooth wirelessheadset has been infinitely close to the traditional wired headset products. Ibelieve that in the next one or two years, we will see more traditional HiFiportable headset brands launch their own wireless or wireless portable earphoneproducts.