Apple is currently dominating the market in the United States for headphones. A poll by Statista found that during 2021, nearly 50% of US consumers of headphones owned either Apple’s AirPods or a product from the Cupertino firm’s Beats lineup.
AirPods take up approximately 34.4% of the headphone share in the country, while Beats products are in second place, with 15.3% of market share.
The rest of the rundown is made up of Bose (12.5%), Samsung (12.2%), JBL and Sony (accounting for 11.4% each), Skullcandy (8.4%) and LG Electronics (7%).
Launching AirPods in 2016 has clearly paid off massively for Apple, especially given that – as reported by CNBC – Apple shifted 27 million pairs of the latest AirPods over the holidays, meaning 90 million pairs were sold in total for the entire holiday quarter.
Apple completely changed the wireless headphone game when it launched AirPods, with the earbuds now estimated to generate $20 billion every year for the Cupertino company. Things will surely only get bigger from here, as analyst Dan Ives from Wedbush has suggested that AirPods will sell 100 million units in 2022.
Right now, with its four different models of AirPods alone – plus Beats products – Apple would seem to offer headphones that appeal to practically every taste.