Apple Vies For Audiophile Ears With New AirPods Max

You can expect a number of last-minute holiday wish list revisions.

Yesterday, Apple introduced its first wireless over-the-ear headphones: the AirPods Max.

Headphones For The Holidays

With noise-canceling capabilities, advanced acoustics, and up to 20 hours of battery life, the Airpods Max offer very similar capabilities to Airpods, according to review site CNET. But with a $549 price tag and black friday safely in the rear-view mirror – the over-the-ear headphones are more than 56% more expensive than the competition.

Quick History Lesson: Apple released the first generation of AirPods wireless earbuds in 2016. Despite a much-ridiculed design, the product has been a huge success: AirPods have been dominating the in-ear wireless headphone market in recent years:

• In 2018, Apple nabbed 60% of the global wireless earbuds market according to Counterpoint Research.
• Then the tech giant sold nearly 60 million pairs of AirPods in 2019, jumping to a 71% market share.

Wearables Beast

Apple’s wearables segment, which consists of watches, headphones and other accessories, cleared $30.6 billion in the last fiscal year, up 25% vs. 2019.

To put that in perspective, that’s more revenue than earned by Starbucks, Viacom CBS, or Hewlett Packard Enterprises.

The Takeaway

Don’t mess with Apple.