What’s next for AirPods?

There’s growing speculation that Apple will be launching their next generation of AirPods sometime this year, so I thought it would be interesting to try to predict what might be in their next generation of earbuds.  The hearables market is moving very quickly and there’s no shortage of technology for Apple to choose from.  But the AirPods are a little different to anything else that Apple has ever brought to market.

The biggest difference is the way it has changed their development model.  Historically, Apple is a follower.  They don’t invent product categories – they wait for other major companies to create the market, then come in with a slicker product which delights customers.  They concentrate on everything which is needed for people to feel that Apple invented the experience.  After that, they create clear water between themselves and their competitors by constantly increasing the level of delight.  The AirPod is arguably the first product where Apple have made the market themselves.  There was a smattering of crowdfunded earbuds before the AirPods were announced, but they were only shipping in tens of thousands.  In contrast, AirPods are shipping in the millions.   For once, Apple wasn’t competing with established industry giants, but small, often poorly funded startups.  That’s what makes the question of what might be in an AirPod 2 or AirPod 3 so interesting.

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Hearables sales could reach $45 billion in 2020

Back in 2014, when I reviewed the emerging wearables market, I suggested that the sector with the greatest potential would be hearables.  Over the intervening two years it has seen intense activity.  Over $45 million has been pledged in crowdfunding campaigns for earbuds and stereo headphones from almost a quarter a million backers.  The value of sales of wireless headsets has overtaken that of wired headsets and now Apple has added momentum by removing the 3.5mm jack on the iPhone 7, as well as launching their own earbud – the Airpod.

One of the key reasons hearables are doing so well compared to other wearable sectors is because they don’t need to work out what to do with the data they generate.  Every other wearable is a slave to the treadmill of quantitative feedback, where it needs to make the data it produces compelling, or else risk being consigned to the drawer of doom.  Hearables are bought for consuming existing content in the form of music or videos, giving apps developers much more time and freedom to play with the accompanying data.  That is a massive advantage over anything that you wear on your wrist.

I’ve just published a report on the hearables market which takes these new developments into account.  It shows a growing opportunity, even greater than I’d suggested two years ago, which could rise to sales of almost $45 billion in 2020.  You can download the report – The Market for Hearable Devices 2016-2020 here.

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Airpods – a Speculative Teardown

On 7th September, Apple announced the demise of the 3.5mm audio jack.  Alongside that, they introduced their Airpods, helping to stoke the momentum for a new world of hearable devices,  The loss of the jack was a move which generated howls of anguish from the wireophile community, along with a flurry of speculation about how Airpods worked as well as what Apple’s new W1 wireless chip was doing.

Having been working with wireless standards and hearables for several years, much of that speculation seemed ill-informed.  Once Airpods come to market in October, companies like iFixit and Chipworks will take them to pieces and we’ll have a better idea of exactly what Apple have done.  But those first tear-downs are still a few months away.  So I thought it would be interesting to try a speculative teardown, based on how I might have designed them, and on the limited information which is in the public domain.  I also think I know what Apple’s second wireless chip will be, and it’s not the W2.

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Hearables at the Mobile World Congress

For most people these days, personal music means phones.  Although our love for personal music started with Sony’s Walkman, it was transformed by Apple’s iPod, launching the iconic images of wires trailing from our ears.  Since then, billions of users have moved to smartphones as the device of choice for personal music, increasingly using streaming services like Spotify.  So the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is a useful touchstone to gauge how that industry is taking note of the way we listen to audio.

For much of the last decade what we put in or on our ears has changed little.  Dr Dre voiced his frustration at the “sub-dollar earbuds” that most people use, as a prime reason for manufacturing his range of Beats headsets.  But it’s only in the last year that we’ve seen the emergence of real changes.  The first is a sudden growth in wireless headsets, thought to be linked to the rise in mobile video and the inconvenience of cables when holding a handset.  The second is the shipment of the first hearables in the form of wireless earbuds, which fit into each ear.  They started with two successful crowdfunded campaigns, one from Earin in Sweden, the other from Bragi in Munich with their Dash earbuds, adds the further refinement of health and fitness sensors.  Both are now shipping, along with Doppler’s Here.  In their wake, over twenty other hearable devices have been successfully funded and a growing number of established manufacturers are joining in.  So I was fascinated to see what the industry would be showcasing in Barcelona.

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The Battle for Mesh. Bluetooth vs Thread?

It’s a New Year, which means it’s time for the annual week of madness in Las Vegas which is the Consumer Electronics Show.  For four days, the electronics industry comes together to tell consumers what they ought to be buying, whilst analysts and the media try to predict what will really be the hot product sector for the coming year.

Over the last few years, as PCs, tablets and phones have lost their wow factor, that’s proven to be a little more difficult than it used to be.  In 2014, the consensus was that wearables would be the next big thing.  They have definitely made strides beyond basic step counting, but are still smouldering rather than setting the world on fire.  Instead, the innovation which caught the public imagination at CES in 2014 was the selfie stick.

In 2015, the smart money was on smart homes.  But with a few exceptions, consumers felt the smart thing to do with their money was to buy more selfie sticks.  This year, the pundits will probably predict that 2016 will be the year of the drone.  My guess is that most consumers will still prefer to buy selfie sticks.  Unless someone comes up with cheap drones that take selfies*.

Of course, like all good works of fiction, the CES show contains a number of interesting subplots,  one of which will be the battle for mesh.

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The Snakes and Ladders of Smart Home

What has the hacking of Ashley Madison got in common with smart homes?  The answer is that both are likely to increase the number of divorces.  If that seems a strange statement, talk to the wife or partner of anyone who’s got a smart home system (it’s generally the husband who buys and installs them).  Most feel that it’s not improved their quality of life; it’s just added another level of frustration, because now they have a home which can go wrong.

Of course, that’s not the message the industry wants to get out. If you believe the analysts and the smart home manufacturers, your home is about to evolve from the thick bricks on the block to the Nobel Prize winning genius of housing.  Technology is finally about to transform the place you live in into a high IQ domicile that reacts to your mood and presence, keeps you safe and saves you energy.

It’s a great story that plays to some excellent futuristic videos, from global technology giants like AT&T, through boutique technology leaders like Nest to the successful crowdfunded visions of Oomi, Nuimi, and Blaze Automation.  In their vision, it’s slick, it’s sexy and it’s almost here.

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