The Unthought of Essentials

The unthought of essentials

Written by: Ryan VanWilligen

With the present day becoming more and more technology heavy almost everyone owns some sort of smartphone. A factor that is often overlooked is that along with smartphones, earbuds, follow closely behind. Apple has provided earbuds with every IPhone purchase since the IPhone 3GS which came out in 2008. Samsung has been providing earbuds with every Galaxy since the Galaxy S which came out in 2010. In this case the earbuds are a positive externality for the customers since they are purchasing such an expensive piece of technology.

All though the total number of earbuds sold between both Apple and Samsung is unknown, with the recent release of Apple’s AirPods, their new wireless headphone, the wireless headphone world has seen a huge shock. Pre AirPod release Apple occupied 0% of the wireless headphone market. Post AirPod release Apple has acquired a whopping 26% of the market surpassing big names such as Bose and Beats.

Speaking of Apple buying out Beats there are a lot of misconceptions about why the purchase was made. As seen in many high schools the amount of people that own beat have gone down a significant amount. Someone may ask themselves “Why would anyone want to purchase a seem to be dying brand like Beats”. The reason that there hasn’t been any major changes with the beats products themselves, ie looks or quality of sound, is because Apple bought Beats for the semi-successful streaming program known as Beats Radio, not for the products. However Apple still did buy Beats as a whole which adds a measly billion dollars annually to the total income of Apple. With Apple seemingly to grow at a constant rate how long will it be before the music listening devices/ music streaming programs market becomes a oligopoly or even a monopoly.  

Potuck, Michael, and Michael Potuck @michaelpotuck Michael Is an Editor for 9to5Mac and 9to5Google. Apple’s AirPods and wireless Beats take 40% of all recent Bluetooth headphone sales." 9to5Mac. N.p., 11 Jan. 2017. Web. 16 May 2017.

Wagstaff, Keith. "The $3 Billion Question: Why Did Apple Buy Beats?" NBCNews.com. NBCUniversal News Group, 29 May 2014. Web. 16 May 2017.

"Apple earbuds." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 06 May 2017. Web. 16 May 2017.

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