Editor/Sun Jingxin
At the end of last century, electronic information technology entered a stage of rapid development and was widely used in the field of consumer electronics. With the development of science and technology, electronic products, whether fast and strong inside or wide and wide outside, have given consumers a quick experience and upgrade. The huge market demand has strengthened the innovation ability of related industries, and the product competition among manufacturers is becoming increasingly fierce. With the gradual saturation of the global smartphone industry, Apple's iPhone revenue has entered a negative growth stage from 20 18Q4. In the coming 5G era, the wave of changing machines will bring the second spring to the smart phone industry. Following the smart phone, in terms of wearable devices, AirPods products ignited the market enthusiasm as soon as they were launched. Numerous domestic manufacturers began to flock to join the TWS headset market, chasing the industry development dividend, and began to copy the domestic replacement of smart phones. IDC's China Wireless Headset Market Quarterly Tracking Report, the second quarter of 2020 shows that the shipment of wireless headsets in China in the first half of 2020 was 42.56 million units, up 24% year-on-year. Among them, true wireless headphones accounted for 64%, a year-on-year increase of 49%. At present, the high-end market of the industry is dominated by AirPods series products, and the competition in the low-end market is fierce. Similar to the cottage blowout in the smart phone market, the price of TWS headphones made by Huaqiang North is generally between 100 yuan and 300 yuan, and the daily shipment of a single small and medium-sized assembly plant can reach tens of thousands, which directly flows into the market through e-commerce, and the industry shows a barbaric growth trend.
First, from "wired" to "wireless" Airpods leads the industry innovation, and high-end users are early adopters.
TWS (True Wireless Stereo) earphone is composed of wireless earphone and charging box, which mainly uses Bluetooth technology for audio transmission. The left and right units of the earphone are independent of each other and have no physical connection, forming a stereo channel. Compared with wired Bluetooth headset, it is simpler in design, more convenient to store and carry, and has no stethoscope effect. Moreover, it is usually equipped with a charging box, which has the functions of quickly connecting the cabin and enhancing the battery life of the headset. It can also be used as a voice assistant access port, greatly improving the user experience.
The concept of TWS was first put forward by Apple and quickly became popular all over the world. In 20 16, Apple released the first smartphone iPhone7 and TWS headset AirPods without 3.5mm headphone jack, which was a great innovation to the previous consumer electronic products. By reducing the external interface of the mobile phone, iPhone7 innovatively solves the defect that the smart phone is easy to get water, and supports the waterproof function of IP67. In addition, the removal of the 3.5mm earphone interface module saves the internal space of the mobile phone, and the Taptic Engine vibration motor is placed in the spare space inside the mobile phone for iPhone7, which brings better vibration effect. Better waterproof function and larger internal space of mobile phones have made other mobile phone manufacturers follow suit, and most mid-to high-end mobile phone models have cancelled the 3.5mm headphone jack. At the same time, mobile phone manufacturers have launched TWS headsets compatible with mobile phones based on their own ecosystems.
Although Android mobile phone manufacturers have entered the TWS headset market, AirPods has always dominated. This is because Apple developed Snoopy for a series of SoC chips W 1 and H 1, and applied for a patent for Snoopy mode. In AirPods using monitoring technology, the auxiliary ear signal does not need to be forwarded by the main ear, but directly monitors the signal sent by the mobile phone to distinguish the signals of the main and auxiliary headphones, thus improving the connection experience of headphones, reducing the power consumption caused by poor connection and obviously improving the battery life. Since then, Apple TWS products have been iterative, and AirPods2 and AirPods Pro have been launched one after another. Both products are equipped with a new generation of H 1 main control chip. Among them, AirPods 2 has updated voice control and wireless charging functions. AirPods Pro introduces SiP package, which further improves the integration of internal components and realizes active noise reduction. Higher-performance processing chips, Siri voice wake-up, waterproof, noise reduction and other functions upgrade, making AirPods series products lead the way, with rapid sales growth.
Since the first generation of Airpods came out, its price of more than 1,000 yuan is not close to the people. In the early days, it was mainly the early adopter experience of high-end users such as Apple products and diehard powder. The institutional survey shows that users are highly satisfied with Airpods in terms of design, charging efficiency, Bluetooth matching of mobile phones, battery life and wearing comfort. At the same time, Airpods is based on the ecology of Apple's own iphone, which can realize the rapid pairing of Apple devices and is perfectly compatible with Apple's exclusive application services such as Siri and Find my iphone. Excellent user experience and Apple's own ecological effects are the key to the outbreak of Airpods. Once introduced, it shows a strong substitution trend for traditional headphones. According to Slice intelligence data, before AirPods was released, the Bluetooth headset market was dominated by traditional audio factories. Beats and Bose rank in the top two with market share of 24. 1% and 10.5%. One month after AirPods was released, its market share reached 26%, making it the highest-selling headset in the United States. According to the data of Strategy Analytics research report, Apple AirPods achieved nearly 60 million sales in 20 19 years, accounting for 7 1% of TWS headset market revenue and 50% of market share. According to Counterpoint's data, it is estimated that the sales volume of AirPods in 20-2 1 year is expected to reach 1 billion-10.50 billion units, of which AirPods Pro accounts for 36%-40%.
Second, from "stand out from the crowd" to "let a hundred flowers blossom", brands and white brands coexist and enjoy the market feast together.
With the great success of Apple AirPods, companies in the industry have laid out the TWS headset market one after another, and the market presents a situation in which a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend.
(1) Mobile phone manufacturers, such as Huawei and Xiaomi, use TWS headphones as the interactive entrance of voice assistants, optimize multi-scene applications, and integrate into their own smart product ecology.
(2) Traditional audio equipment manufacturers, such as Sony, Rambler and Wanmo, have more professional and mature technologies in sound quality and sound effect.
(3) Internet companies, Google and Amazon Feng, Internet technology giants, have more advantages in artificial intelligence voice chips, algorithms, bone voiceprints and other technical fields.
(4) Huaqiang North white brand manufacturers rely on the cost advantage to quickly occupy the market through small profits but quick turnover.
(1) The core pain point was broken, the connection gap with Apple products gradually narrowed, and the user experience was more optimized.
Connection stability is the core pain point of TWS headphones. Because Apple monopolized the patent of Snoopy scheme, TWS headphones in the early days of Android mainly used the forwarding method, and the audio was transmitted from the connection end to the main device, and then the main device forwarded it to the auxiliary device. This scheme uses 2.4GHz Bluetooth signal to transmit audio, but the 2.4GHz frequency band is easily absorbed by human body, resulting in poor penetration and easily interfered by Bluetooth signals such as WiFi. At the same time, because of the need for secondary forwarding, the connection stability and delay of forwarding mode are much worse than that of monitoring mode. In addition, the single-ear forwarding mode is only for the main device, and the auxiliary device cannot be used alone, resulting in the power consumption of the main device is significantly higher than that of the auxiliary device. Poor connection stability, short standby time, large voice delay, poor quality and even pairing problems lead to unsatisfactory development of TWS headphones for Android for a period of time.
In recent years, Rhoda, Hengxuan, Qualcomm, Huawei and other enterprises have broken through the technical blockade of monitoring mode, launched optimized transmission schemes, and the functions of Android products have been significantly improved.
Qualcomm adopted 2.4GHz TWS forwarding scheme in the early days. 2065438+In February 2008, Qualcomm introduced TWS+ technology based on QCC5 100 series chips. The mobile phone terminal sends two independent left and right audio signals to the left and right earphones. This dual transmission scheme needs the support of Bluetooth chips on mobile phones, and can only be realized on mobile phones equipped with Snapdragon 845, 670, 7 10 and above chips. On other platforms, headphones will be converted to the traditional high-delay forwarding mode. Although the compatibility is relatively poor, thanks to Qualcomm's high market share in mobile phone SoC, the scheme also has a certain audience.
Hengxuan LBRT-Low-frequency forwarding technology first transmits the signal as a high-frequency Bluetooth signal to the main earphone, and then synchronizes it to the auxiliary earphone through magnetic induction forwarding technology. This can enhance the signal penetration, avoid the loss of sound quality and reduce the delay. Huawei Freebuds2 and Xiaomi TWS headphones all adopt this scheme. At the same time, the scheme does not need the adaptation support of mobile phone SoC, and can achieve good compatibility with different mobile phone platforms. The disadvantage is that headphones need a low-frequency antenna.
Huawei's early TWS headphones adopted Hengxuan's scheme. 2065438+September 2009, Huawei released a brand-new TWS headset Freebuds3, which is equipped with the latest Kirin A 1 chip and adopts the self-developed dual-channel synchronous transmission technology, which is similar to TWS+ technology in Qualcomm, so that the left and right headphones can obtain Bluetooth signals from the left and right channels respectively. This chip is the first certified BT/BLE dual-mode Bluetooth 5. 1SoC. Dual-channel synchronous transmission is equipped with high-rate audio processing unit, which realizes stable and fast wireless connection and accurate audio-visual synchronization. But it also needs to be used with Kirin SOC, which has great limitations.
In 20 19, Rhoda broke through Apple's patent blockade and released the MCSync scheme, which is similar to Apple's monitoring scheme. After the Bluetooth connection between the phone and the main speaker is completed, every other speaker is connected to the signal. The advantage of this scheme lies in its stable connection, high-resolution audio stream support, independence from mobile phone terminal support, good compatibility with various platforms, and its application in many white-label manufacturers' products. 2065438+In July 2009, Rhoda released an upgraded version of AB 155X platform, equipped with SNOY WF- 1000XM3 headphones, which further supported active noise reduction and voice control functions.
On June 7th, 2020, 65438 Bluetooth Technology Alliance launched BLEA, releasing a new generation of low-power audio LE Audio, adopting a brand-new codec LC3, multi-stream audio, hearing aid and broadcast audio technology, in which multi-stream audio can be realized between a single audio source device such as a smart phone and a single or multiple audio receiving devices. At the same time, multiple independent audio streams are transmitted, so that TWS headphones on Android system have binaural transmission experience, and smart phones can transmit the same audio signal to both ears at the same time without forwarding, thus improving the connection stability of Bluetooth headphones and reducing the delay. Android TWS headset manufacturers can continuously introduce and develop new technologies with the help of Bluetooth audio new technical standards, narrow the gap between basic connection transmission and Airpods, and greatly improve the user experience.
(2) Brand and white brand * * * exist, the whole people * * * enjoy a TWS headset feast, and the market demand is detonated.
Thanks to the development of Bluetooth technology, chip technology and transmission technology, the performance of TWS headphones has been gradually improved, which has been recognized by more and more users, and the shipment volume has been accelerating, showing explosive growth. According to Counterpoint statistics, in 20 16 years, the global TWS headset shipments were 9180,000 pairs, mainly contributed by original AirPods; Subsequently, with the iteration of AirPods new products and the entry of Android into the market, the shipments of TWS headphones continued to expand. The annual shipments of 20 17-20 19 are 20 million, 46 million and1290,000 respectively. It is estimated that the shipment will reach more than 230 million in 2020, 20 16-2020.
Judging from the brand competition pattern, Apple is the only one, while other mobile phones, traditional stereos and technology manufacturers divide the market. According to the data of counterpoint, a market research organization, in Q4 of 20 19, global TWS shipments reached 5 1 10,000, among which apple shipments accounted for 4 1% of the industry and market sales accounted for 62% of the whole market. The remaining market share is occupied by other mobile phone systems such as Xiaomi, Samsung and Huawei, accounting for15-25%; The other part is occupied by traditional audio producers, accounting for10-15%; The rest are derivative companies of various science and technology industrial chains, accounting for 10- 15%.
From the price point of view, Apple AirPods series focuses on the high-end market with its performance advantages, and the price is always above 1,000 yuan. Compared with the high-end positioning of Apple TWS headphones, Android products have a complete product price system, achieving full coverage of different price points. In the high-end market, the prices of Huawei and Samsung TWS headphones are generally distributed at 799-999 yuan, and some products can be compared with the performance of Apple products. In the low-end market, the prices of TWS headsets of mobile phone manufacturers such as Xiaomi, OPPO and VIVO are mostly around 199-599. Among them, Xiaomi's TWS headphones are mainly cost-effective, and Redmi Airdots is only 99.9 yuan. According to GFK statistics, the ASP of 20 17-20 19 global TWS headphones is 100 USD, 126 USD and 85.08 USD respectively. In 20 19, the unit price of TWS headphones dropped significantly, mainly due to the rapid development of white-brand products in TWS headphones market in 20 19, which led to the decline of the overall market average price.
In terms of market penetration, it is estimated that the global iPhone stock will exceed 1 100 million in 2020, and the total shipment of AirPods 20 17-20 19 is about 65438+100000, so the current penetration rate of AirPods products is about1kloc. At the same time, according to Ericsson's statistics, there are currently 5.6 billion smartphone users in the global market. Excluding iPhone users, the total installed capacity of Android phones is about 4.6 billion. The total shipment of TWS headphones from 20 17 to 20 19 of Android company is about 90 million, so the penetration rate of TWS products in Android machine is about 2% at present. In contrast, the Android market has a larger user base, and TWS headphones have more room for growth.
The high ecological fit between mobile phone manufacturers and wireless headsets is the first-Mover advantage for mobile phone manufacturers to enter TWS market. The number of 925 million iPhone in the world is an important reason for the success of AirPods series products, and Android phones with global shipments six times that of Apple will also give full play to their installed capacity advantages, gradually break the technical bottleneck and accelerate market penetration. According to the forecast data of Toubao Research Institute, in the next five years, with the maturity of Bluetooth, chips, sensors and other technologies, as well as the growing demand for online office and online learning, TWS headset industry will accelerate its development and is expected to become the fastest-growing smart wearable device field. It is predicted that the global market scale will reach 426,543.8 billion US dollars in 2024.
Generally speaking, in the high-end market, apple products are riding the dust, and in the low-end market, Huaqiang North began to harvest. Huaqiang North White started at a low price and quickly seized the low-end market, and the user's usage habits were gradually cultivated and established. At present, the shipments of domestic brand TWS headphones only account for about 25%, including Android phone manufacturers such as Huawei, Samsung, OV and Xiaomi, as well as traditional audio manufacturers, and even Internet companies such as iQiyi and Netease Cloud have joined in. The whole track is expanding rapidly, and the industry is in a melee period. TWS headset market brands and white brands coexist, product users sink from first-and second-tier cities to third-and sixth-tier cities, and the whole people enjoy the market feast.
Third, from "usable" to "easy to use" technological innovation and upgrading, the consumption experience is the ultimate.
(1) sound quality
The sound quality of TWS headphones is related to Bluetooth coding and decoding technology, chip capability, transmission mode and other factors. At present, the popularity of Bluetooth 5.0 technology provides greater communication capacity for audio. Sony LDAC, Qualcomm aptX HD and Huawei HWA are the main representatives of high-definition audio coding and decoding technology that can significantly improve the sound quality.
(1) Sony officially launched LDAC high-resolution audio technology during CES in 20 15, and officially opened it to Android 8.0 in 20 17. However, the premise for encoder to realize high-definition audio transmission is the two-way support of transmitter and receiver, and Android 8.0 supporting LDAC only solves the problem of transmitter, but the popularity of LDAC in receiver (headphones, speakers, etc.). ) It still needs a process.
(2) Compared with Sony LDAC, Qualcomm introduced aptX high-definition Bluetooth audio codec technology on 20 16. Due to the foundation of aptX (currently supported by about 4 billion devices) and Qualcomm's own advantages in chips, communications and other fields, it has a wider application potential.
(3) Huawei's key component suppliers and equipment suppliers on the 20 18 joint audio link * * * have developed an end-to-end Bluetooth HD audio solution HWA(Hi-Res wireless audio). At present, the HWA high-definition audio wireless transmission standard and industry alliance have also been established, with members including rambler, Institute of Acoustics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, AKM, Sennheiser, HiFiMAN, 1MORE Wanmo, hivi, etc.
In addition, the new generation of Bluetooth audio technology standards are constantly improving in terms of audio. Music Audio integrates a brand-new high-quality low-power audio decoder LC3 to support audio sharing. Even if the bit rate is reduced by 50%, the sound quality can still be maintained and the transmission efficiency of Bluetooth audio can be optimized.
With the popularization of lossless audio coding and the release of BLEA, the sound quality of TWS headphones is expected to usher in a qualitative leap, and the gap between TWS headphones and wired headphones will gradually narrow.
(2) reduce noise
As a portable earphone product, its application scenarios are often outdoor and public places. Ensuring the call quality in the case of excessive noise or poor signal is a key factor to improve the user experience.
At present, TWS headphones have two active noise reduction methods: ANC (Active Noise Control) and ENC (Environmental Noise Elimination).
ANC noise reduction technology uses the reverse sound wave generated by the noise reduction system inside the earphone to neutralize the external noise, so as to achieve the effect of noise reduction. With the development of artificial intelligence and deep learning technology, earphone active noise reduction technology gradually begins to get rid of the limitation of setting fixed parameters. It can learn deeply from multiple usage scenarios, find the optimal filtering parameters in each scene, realize adaptive noise reduction and provide better noise reduction effect. At present, the latest chips of Apple, Rhoda, Hengxuan, Qualcomm, Ruiyu, Sony, AMS, Dialog, Cirrus Logic and other manufacturers have supported active noise reduction. Used in mainstream products in the market, such as Apple Airpods Pro, Sony WF- 1000XM3, Amazon Echo Buds, Huawei Flypods3, OppoEnco W5 1, etc. At the same time, due to the excellent active noise reduction performance of Apple Airpods Pro, ANC noise reduction technology is expected to become the standard of TWS high-end headphones.
ENC noise reduction technology uses dual microphone array to accurately calculate the position of the speaker, which can protect the target speech in the main direction and eliminate the interference noise in the environment. ENC technology can suppress 90% reverse environmental noise and provide users with high-quality voice call effect. However, ENC technology requires high software algorithms and will increase the power consumption of the whole system. From the product side, Airpods uses bone conduction technology+dual microphones to reduce noise, voice and environmental noise are collected by external dual microphones through air transmission, and bone conduction acceleration sensor only collects audio information of vocal cord vibration, which is processed by DSP algorithm to realize clear communication. Huawei Freebuds3 uses dual microphones and bone voiceprint sensors to reduce call noise. When talking, the bone voiceprint sensor only picks up and strengthens the human voice by sensing the vibration of the head tissue, which effectively weakens the environmental noise, thus creating a high-quality dialogue and making the other party listen more clearly.
(3) endurance
In the future, the development trend of smart and bio-headphones and the demand of carrying more chips all need the support of low power consumption. The longer the battery life, the less charging times and the better the user experience. At present, most TWS headphones on the market can last for more than 3 hours, not to mention that Samsung Galaxy Buds+ has achieved a battery life of up to 1 1 hour. The battery life of headphones is closely related to chip power consumption. In the past, the power consumption of Bluetooth chips was generally around 20mA. The power consumption of Li Jie's model AC6936d Bluetooth headset chip is reduced to 6mA, while that of Hengxuan's BES2300 chip is as low as 4mA, and that of Qualcomm's QCC5 144 chip is 5mA. Compared with the past 20mA power consumption, the battery life has been qualitatively improved.
intelligence
Headphones have high-frequency use requirements and personal personalization, which will give birth to AI applications suitable for the whole scene. At present, the intelligent functions of TWS headphones are mainly reflected in:
(1) integration with mobile phone voice assistants, such as integrating or supporting Siri and Google Assistant;
(2) Equipped with biosensors to support biometric motion tracking, such as monitoring heart rate and recording motion path;
(3) multilingual real-time translation. Combined with Bragi's positioning and technical evolution of TWS headphones, TWS headphones gradually have the ability of independent perception, storage and even calculation. Bragi Dash headset has 27 sensors built in, which helps to realize health tracking, new interaction and other functions, such as shaking your head to control virtual 4D menu. Airpods has about 8 sensors in a single earphone, including voice acceleration sensor and optical sensor.
With the improvement of intelligence, TWS headphones are expected to be equipped with more sensors in the future. They are no longer simple earphones, but will become portable voice interactive devices to collect information and logo data, cross data and stereoscopic data, thus making the user's portrait and behavior clearer.
Generally speaking, it has been four years since Apple's first generation AirPods was released in September, 20 16, and it has become one of the main drivers of Apple's performance growth. Thanks to the efforts of MediaTek Rhoda, Qualcomm, Huawei and other companies, TWS Android headset has achieved a breakthrough in Bluetooth connection technology and solved the problems of stability and delay of Bluetooth connection. The market space has been detonated and the demand has increased rapidly. In the future, with the commercialization of Le audio, a new generation of Bluetooth audio technology standard, and the improvement of sound quality, noise reduction, battery life and other functions and intelligence, the industry will leap over the barbaric growth stage, and the competition pattern will be further concentrated on mobile phone brand manufacturers, bringing consumers a better scene experience. Domestic brands such as Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, etc. Through continuous technical iteration and independent innovation, we will gradually realize the domestic substitution of AirPods in the field of TWS headphones, realize external output while bringing increment to the "internal circulation" economy, and help build a "double circulation" pattern.