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Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

kevinrooke.com

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Re: Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

#291

Post by ghaff »

saagarjha wrote: post #239
zelly wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You act like the fashion is not tech. Their stuff looks good because of engineering all the way down. Looking good is a feature. I disagree with the idea that it's marketing. Apple does very little marketing these days. Apple products are a memetic virus.

> Apple does very little marketing these days. Apple does a significant amount of marketing, and I'd argue that they've been steadily ramping it up recently. It's just that they're usually a lot better at staying out of your face about it.

First of all marketing != advertising.

But they certainly do advertising specifically. A lot has been oriented around photography for a while but that's hardly surprising as people certainly don't upgrade phones for texting or phone calls.

Re: Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

#292

Post by dkonofalski »

jVinc wrote: post #162
gumby wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sony for example was unable to parlay its Walkman dominance into similar positions with new devices. Actually the Walkman (which was arguably Sony's second breakout product, the first being a transistor radio) Sony was definitely the cool kid. And don't forget the Playstation or the Trinitron. In fact Steve Jobs explicitly emulated and admired Sony for their (then) sense of style, customer appeal and quality. The S…

OP wasn't saying walkman wasn't cool or have a significant market position, in fact he's saying the exact opposite. That Sony had the position an failed to use it to position new devices. Apple turned the iPod into the iPhone and iPad and now they have AirPods coming off of the same train using each product brand to push the brand of the next. Sony had the Walkman but missed the mp3-player market, didn't bring out a…

>didn't bring out a walkman phone

This isn't true but maybe that verifies exactly the point you're trying to make. Sony had a whole line of Walkman phones including a Walkman brick phone, a flip phone, and an awesome switchblade-style phone. They were able to sync music to your computer directly, without any software, and stored it all on a Sony memory stick. Unfortunately, they also did not have a standard headphone jack and relied on connecting headphones through the same data/sync port which meant that you had to use and buy the Walkman-branded headphones from Sony.

They were soooo close but a few key decisions made them fail miserably.

Re: Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

#293

Post by the_watcher »

123six wrote: post #50
paxys wrote: post #21

As always, none of the numbers are official, so take all of them with a huge grain of salt. The article also doesn't link to a single source, not even an unofficial one. > Assuming an even split of sales between Gen 1, Gen 2, and AirPods Pro, Airpods revenue was $12 billion in 2019 This itself is a terrible assumption. AirPods Pro launched in November 2019, so had just 2 months of sales. Even otherwise, there is neve…

Correct, these are all estimates. And the sales split is unclear, but both Airpods 2 and Airpods Pro have the benefit of launching before the holidays. They got a disproportionate number of sales from those 2 months. Even if everyone went with the $150 version (which is impossible), Airpods revenue would still be $9 billion at 60 million units. The point still stands though, Apple is making a killing off Airpods. Whe…

We also have no idea what the margins are on AirPods. It's not at all accurate to apply overall Apple gross margins (which include high-margin offerings like their services and iPhones) to AirPods, which are likely one of their lowest margin products.

Re: Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

#294

Post by the_watcher »

adventured wrote: post #110
larrydag wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also this is revenue numbers too. No mention of margins over expenses.

Apple infamously has high margins on its hardware. If we were to consider that, the comparison is guaranteed to be dramatically worse (in the favor of Apple). Shopify, Snapchat and Spotify have yet to earn a single net dollar in profit. They're all still losing money as of their most recent quarters. And their lifetime losses are epic to say the least. Twitter also may still be negative for its lifetime, given its ve…

They have high margins on products that retail for multiples of their relevant competition. The same is not true for AirPods. I find it extremely unlikely that their margins are greater than 10%.

Re: Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

#295

Post by nicoburns »

kristianc wrote: post #223
samatman wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During that same era, Apple's slogan for the iPod was, notoriously: "Rip. Mix. Burn." They were the first company to crack the nut of digital music sales, and getting those deals with the recording industry absolutely required DRM at the time.

> During that same era, Apple's slogan for the iPod was, notoriously: "Rip. Mix. Burn." So the argument that Apple didn’t outcompete Sony on marketing rests on a marketing slogan from 20 years ago? That slogan makes pretty clear to me what Apple’s priorities were and had been all along - put the customer’s needs at the forefront of their positioning.

Apple actually had a product for this too (itunes), which integrated with the ipod, and allowed you to seamlessly rip your existing CD collection and sync it to your ipod in one relatively simple piece of software. You can tell how important this was by the fact that apple produced a windows version of itunes.

I believe CD ripping software was relatively niche before that due to legal concerns. I don't think it was just marketing.

Re: Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

#296

Post by Dwolb »

paxys wrote: post #21

As always, none of the numbers are official, so take all of them with a huge grain of salt. The article also doesn't link to a single source, not even an unofficial one. > Assuming an even split of sales between Gen 1, Gen 2, and AirPods Pro, Airpods revenue was $12 billion in 2019 This itself is a terrible assumption. AirPods Pro launched in November 2019, so had just 2 months of sales. Even otherwise, there is neve…

I mean sure? Does that really change the point of the article?

Even 25% of those numbers gets us to really impressive revenue numbers.

Additionally the author's conclusion that although Airpod revenue is relatively good for a technology company, it's small compared to Apple's total revenue and as compared to the future value of services revenue this hardware enables.

Re: Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

#297

Post by the_watcher »

sandoooo wrote: post #249
addicted wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree about the fashion bit. The iPod was better than any competitor it faced ever. The UI with the click wheel was completely unmatched. Maybe the Zune, years later, came close, but Apple absolutely crushed it with the iPhone and iPod touch. The iPhone was leaps and bounds ahead of its time, to the point that the then King of the hill, BlackBerry, didn’t even think it was possible. And the smoothness o…

Remember itunes? UI was horrible from day one and got worse over the years until they killed it. I don't think it was ever a dealbreaker. UI is not the whole story here.

The iTunes UI was, by far, the best for legally acquiring digital music when it launched.

Re: Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

#298

Post by krazyk8s »

mastazi wrote: post #141

I can't wear any earphones for more than 5 minutes without them falling off, this is due to the morphology of my ears. I wonder: how large is the percentage of people with the same problem? Anecdotal, but I know personally at least a couple other people that can't wear earphones for the same reason. Note: I'm talking about earphones/earbuds exclusively, headphones are fine for obvious reasons. Also some types of earp…

You are definitely not alone! I have a very small antitragus, earbuds are not an option for me. They hold so poorly that I can't even walk around without them falling out, much less do any real activity. And if that weren't bad enough, for some reason they cause a significant amount of pain after 10 minutes or so.

Re: Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

#300

Post by capkutay »

gz5 wrote: post #40

Amazing how Apple managed to make the first cool MP3 player, then the first cool smartphone and now the first cool bluetooth headset. For almost 20 years now, Apple has owned electronic fashion. Sony for example was unable to parlay its Walkman dominance into similar positions with new devices. And make no mistake about it - a huge portion of these sales are people buying Apple's marketing - not buying the tech itsel…

Remember when the airpods first came out? SNL, Conan O'Brian, all of twitter were basically dragging it through the mud and making a mockery of them. 3 years later you can't walk around a major city or airport without seeing a significant amount of people using them.
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