Apple’s share in the TWS buds market shrinks despite increasing sales
A Counterpoint Research report shows that Apple has lost some market share in the truly wireless earphones market while its AirPods sales are actually going up. From nearly half of all the sales of TWS buds in 2019, Apple’s share has dropped down to 35% in 2020. However, the raw numbers still show healthy growth – 61 million sales in 2019 to a forecasted 82 million sales in 2020.
The reason for the decreasing share is mostly Chinese brands offering the same, if not better features and sound quality at considerably lower prices. Samsung is gaining traction as well – now standing at 6% market share and looking at 17 million sales this year. A generous increase from 8 million in 2019. However, Xiaomi still takes the second place with 10% share.
Counterpoint says that Samsung has a big potential for even faster growth if it introduces more buds in different price segments with various versions in each one. With the launch of the Galaxy Buds Live, Samsung moved 300,000 units in the first couple of weeks after launch.
Another interesting take from Counterpoint’s report is that many of the established audio brands like Sennheiser and Audio-Technica have very little market presence, at the expense of companies with less traditions in the segment.