Headphones Market Shares Apple Takes the Lead

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The 20,000 Foot View: Headphones are the physical manifestation of streaming music. With the focus of listening shifted from home speakers to smartphones, headphones have become ubiquitous. But, whereas convenience was unchallenged in the early years, consumers have started to place more importance on quality. Headphones have been the clear winner with a highly sophisticated and segmented marketplace having arisen to meet a diversity of user needs and budgets.
Key Findings
- Only of do not have a pair headphones
- Smartphone listening the second most widespread listening at penetration, behind the car and ahead of at home speakers at
- Sony is most widely owned individual headphone with of consumers owning a
- However, when three headphone brand categories are (Earpods, Airpods, Beats) it has leading market share in headphone with
- The US the largest headphones market globally million headphone owners, followed by large Latin American countries Mexico Brazil
- Beats performs its US home territory, while only secures a top three in its home territory Germany
- Panasonic performs in Japan, Brazil and Mexico
- Beats owners and are relatively evenly spread terms of gender: are male
- Apple Earpods the most female heavy user – suggesting that males are more inclined to invest in headphones
- Higher-end consumer brands have older, more male of Bang and Olufsen owners male, for Bose, for Sennheiser for BeyerDynamic
- Music subscribers most likely to own Apple followed by Sony on and Beats on
- Amazon Prime users are more likely to Apple headphones than Apple Music are
Companies and brands mentioned in this report: AKG, Amazon, Amazon Prime Music, Apple, Apple AirPods, Apple EarPods, Apple Music, Bang and Olufsen, Beats, Betron, BeyerDynamic, Bose, Grado, Jabra, Optoma, Panasonic, Sennheiser, Skull Candy, Sony, Sony Walkman, Spotify, TaoTronics