The HN title is ambiguous. The point of the Twitter thread is that it doesn't exceed them combined. But then he writes:
> (By the way, the article in question put AirPods revenue at $12 billion in 2019. The actual number will end up being more like half that - closer to $7.5 billion.)
Which means it still exceeds each of them separately.
Just to put that in context for everyone here. If his analysis is correct, AirPods are still bigger than Spotify, which is fascinating to think about.
I don't get whats weird about that? You need some kind of device in order to listen to Spotify and today there is a lot of services competing with Spotify.
Spotify also have a huge number of free accounts that rely on ads which probably means less profits for Spotify. Everyone still needs to actually spend money to get the device but you don't really need to spend money to listen to music. Also, while Airpods is a "one off" purchase, a lot of people don't like having subscriptions (like me for example).
I have spent hundreds of dollars the last years on headphones (not Airpods tho) but I hesitate for a long time before starting a subscription service. Not because I cannot afford to, I just do not like subscription services.
Spotify, Youtube Music etc provide a free service. With adblocker, music.youtube.com is totally free without any ads so I have a really hard time to justify the cost of another paid service like Spotify.
Edit: if you downvote this, please comment on why? What is incorrect about my statements?
In San Francisco (so at the center of the bubble) I've been shocked by the adoption of the AirPods pro. I see them everywhere now and they've only been out for two months or so. Add the regular AirPods in and they're downright ubiquitous.
These are $250 headphones. I've loved music all my life and I used to get weird looks from people when I told them I was spending $150-200 on nice earbuds with better sound quality. For about a decade everyone was pretty happy with the white iPod headphones that came in the box.
Thinking back I guess Beats opened the floodgates of "normal people having expensive headphones" and also "headphones as fashion" and then AirPods came in and added a whole convenience layer on top which seems to be driving people to buy in droves.
So yeah, Apple's raking it in. Guess I shouldn't be surprised.
Don't forget that more than a few of us are sporting Powerbeats Pros, basically AirPods with ear hooks. I personally haven't visually surveyed how common they are, but I can't be the only one that bought a pair. I'm guessing they don't come close to AirPods on sales because you kinda have to know the Powerbeats exist. Whereas I think you'd have to live deep in that cave to not know about AirPods.
(And if AirPods of any kind don't work for your ears, give the Powerbeats a test drive. For me, AirPods are great until I start actively moving around, or put a helmet on.)
I am not someone who spend a lot of money on audio hardware, but plunked $150 for AirPods. The product is just so good, and there is no way I can go back to a wired headset now. In fact I hate talking on my phone without AirPods in general now
Are the AirPods actually good headphones? Personally I don't consider the basic Apple headphones that come with iPhones to be either good audio quality or comfortable design, and the AirPods look identcal aside from the lack of wires (but I've never used them).
I can sort of understand spending $200 on really good quality, comfortable headphones, though I wouldn't myself - if only because I'll inevitably break or lose them after a few months, even more of an issue with these wireless headphones. But if they don't check either of those boxes, I can't fathom why they're so popular, aside from Apple marketing.
In contrast, down in LA, Airpods were everywhere (at least among iPhone users)...but are now being replaced by cheaper headphones as the owners lose their airpods.
Not only are AirPods very profitable, but with a non-user-serviceable battery, they are also disposable. This way users can enjoy buying new $200 AirPods every couple years and Apple gets the recurring revenue to pour to climate initiatives like combating the rise of e-waste.
So, my other listening equipment is a pait of senn HD280 that I have had since 2006.
They're kind of a Ship of Theseus, insofar as I have replaced every element but the drivers multiple times. I'm fairly handy with a soldering iron, and have been repairing them myself with parts for the manufacturer.
I think that this about the best case for repairs.
One replacement of the cord generates more plastic waste than the entirety of the airpods I use.
I've also been going through wired headphones at a rate of about 1 per year, as they are mechanically fragile. However, I don't think that this year I will be replacing the airpods I have been using for the last year... granted the battery will eventually fail. But to me, the lifetime on the airpods is so-far exceeding that of the wired earphones.
So am I wrong in thinking that between having replaceable components that are wasteful in themselves and the increased lifespan of the device, I'm just paying a rather large premium to -reduce- e-waste?
People keep mentioning this point and I'm a little confused. In 2020 a non-user-replaceable battery seems to be the standard situation for all my electronics, not just AirPods. I'm not saying it's a good thing I just don't get why this criticism tends to mostly come up around AirPods.
Nothing is going to change on that front until government mandates minimum lifetime for equipment.
In Norway these devices are covered for up to 5 years after date of purchase. This follows the product, so unlike some warranties it also covers second hand purchases as well.
Sooner or later we'll get laws saying that each electronic device MUST have a replaceable battery.
In most cases, whether intentional or not, only the battery needs to be changed, but because of the way products are designed now, you have to throw the other 80% of the product in the trash.
When world's governments become a little more environmentally-conscious, they'll see this solution as a no-brainer, just like the EU saw a single charging standard necessary to combat electronics waste.
It's a shame to see "green Apple" spearhead the exact opposite of this movement with products that become environmental waste once their battery drops below 50% or so their original capacity.
So this tweeter's estimate is that it's still bigger than AMD, Spotify, Square, Twitter, Snapchat, and Shopify, just not combined. And not bigger than Adobe or Nvidia.
And now we have two attention-seeking Airpods revenue stories instead of one.
I think the key issue is that it wasn't taken down? So good that the commenters know it's wrong, but they just changed the title which doesn't solve the problem.
That was my first thought when I saw the inital observations.
I thought Apple was always a bit vague about exact revenues by product and those kind of granular numbers. They would give numbers here or there but it was never clear what exactly those numbers meant.
Valuations follow a power law distribution and the estimate was off by only a factor of 2, which is basically equal as far as power laws are concerned. So the assertions basically hold.
Twitter annualized revenue from Q419 is $3bn. Spotify 19Q2 revenue annualized is $6bn.
The comments yesterday said the same thing. However what I took away from that article was that AirPods are you really successful and that their revenue exceeds many unicorns individually. Bluetooth heating tools have been recognized as a real need for a long time and Apple enters the market really late and takes over with perfect design and execution creating a new market segment in the process.
The first thing I noticed about the previous article was how truly terrible the numbers were on that article. Everything from the assumed ASP of the iPhone to the total sales were complete nonsense, end easily verifiable as such. Neil Cybart is pretty biased towards Apple, but his numbers game has always been spot on and he's completely correct here.
One of the big problems with the modern web is how quickly mis-information get amplified and how corrections get muffled.
Basically, everyone's just estimating. The original chart assumes 60M pairs of AirPods sold according to Kuo's estimates with an ASP of $200, while the author of the "correction" tweet is citing his own estimates at 35M pairs sold at an ASP of $162.
I'm not sure who is more trustworthy, but it generally seems like most people think $12B is too high and Cybart (the correction tweet guy) is closer to the actual sales figure
Speaking personally, I treat them like the expensive items that they are. They are in my ears, or they are in their case, full stop. Oh, I sometimes think I'll just stick them in my pocket, I won't forget. "Eh, that's how shit gets lost; stick 'em in the case."
I also still have the same pair of Oakelys I bought fifteen years ago. But I understand not everyone is so regimented (my wife, for instance), so I'm sure more than a few have made a trip through the wash. My wife lost hers for a while, so I used credit card points to buy a new pair. She then, of course, promptly found her prior pair and now she has two.
I can't say they're never lost--just last week I saw a single AirPod sitting on a table going through airport security--but as a user of both the AirPods and AirPods Pro, I have more easily lost wired earbuds than these.
You might be thinking in terms of a single AirPod, but for most practical purposes, the unit to track is the case that holds them, and it's not so easy to lose. Thanks to its existence, no AirPod should ever be in a pocket un-cased, so no risk of washing machines, either.
Unless you're already this clutzy with your wallet and phone, I don't see how expensive headphones that you frequently use enough to keep on you is going to be any different.
AirPods are the product I’ve never wanted, at a cost I don’t want to pay. I have a five year old IPhone. Lightning jack is almost broken, but the headphone jack works like a charm. It’s the only reason why I haven’t bought a new Iphone yet. I just don’t want to give in to Apple’s marketing in this case.
Sadly this person is just pushing their own blog, and if you get suckered into following the link, you'll find no sources for their claims either. All you get is the line: "the math checks out with Apple management’s commentary and clues provided on the 4Q19 earnings conference call". Um, ok. Supposedly there is more information behind the paywall for their subscription service, but we'll never know.
It was well-established in the comments on the previous article that many numbers were wildly off, so without any sources these tweets bring absolutely nothing new to the conversation.
I own Samsung Galaxy buds, rather than Airpods but the logic is the same (the audio quality is worse though).
You don't lose them because they live in a charging case and they go straight from ear to charging case. You never put them down anywhere else.
The difference with using them is bigger than you would imagine. There's no untangling of cable, no threading down clothes, no restriction on where you put your phone (assuming it's vaguely nearby). I can, for instance, put them in one handed while never taking my eyes off the road.
[+] [-] crazygringo|6 years ago|reply
> (By the way, the article in question put AirPods revenue at $12 billion in 2019. The actual number will end up being more like half that - closer to $7.5 billion.)
Which means it still exceeds each of them separately.
Just to put that in context for everyone here. If his analysis is correct, AirPods are still bigger than Spotify, which is fascinating to think about.
[+] [-] ecmascript|6 years ago|reply
Spotify also have a huge number of free accounts that rely on ads which probably means less profits for Spotify. Everyone still needs to actually spend money to get the device but you don't really need to spend money to listen to music. Also, while Airpods is a "one off" purchase, a lot of people don't like having subscriptions (like me for example).
I have spent hundreds of dollars the last years on headphones (not Airpods tho) but I hesitate for a long time before starting a subscription service. Not because I cannot afford to, I just do not like subscription services.
Spotify, Youtube Music etc provide a free service. With adblocker, music.youtube.com is totally free without any ads so I have a really hard time to justify the cost of another paid service like Spotify.
Edit: if you downvote this, please comment on why? What is incorrect about my statements?
[+] [-] gdubs|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcguire|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] habosa|6 years ago|reply
These are $250 headphones. I've loved music all my life and I used to get weird looks from people when I told them I was spending $150-200 on nice earbuds with better sound quality. For about a decade everyone was pretty happy with the white iPod headphones that came in the box.
Thinking back I guess Beats opened the floodgates of "normal people having expensive headphones" and also "headphones as fashion" and then AirPods came in and added a whole convenience layer on top which seems to be driving people to buy in droves.
So yeah, Apple's raking it in. Guess I shouldn't be surprised.
[+] [-] crazygringo|6 years ago|reply
It just makes dealing with incessant city noise so much more manageable.
You don't even have to be listening to music.
But if you are listening to music, you hear it so much more clearly and can use a lower volume.
From a quality of life perspective, if you commute by foot/subway/bus, they're so so worth it.
(Yes there were noise-cancelling headphones before, but always bulky or with wires. With AirPods, they're just effortless to bring+wear.)
[+] [-] mikestew|6 years ago|reply
(And if AirPods of any kind don't work for your ears, give the Powerbeats a test drive. For me, AirPods are great until I start actively moving around, or put a helmet on.)
[+] [-] dmode|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wjoe|6 years ago|reply
I can sort of understand spending $200 on really good quality, comfortable headphones, though I wouldn't myself - if only because I'll inevitably break or lose them after a few months, even more of an issue with these wireless headphones. But if they don't check either of those boxes, I can't fathom why they're so popular, aside from Apple marketing.
[+] [-] mbesto|6 years ago|reply
Gen1 airpods basically suck after 1.5 years in because they only hold 30 min of call battery life. I'd be willing to bet thats 50% of the adoption.
> For about a decade everyone was pretty happy with the white iPod headphones that came in the box.
Which have been made obsolete by smartphone manufacturers (namely Apple) by eliminating the headphone jack.
> AirPods came in and added a whole convenience layer on top which seems to be driving people to buy in droves
1) They're wireless (and dont have the unfashionable "wire around the neck thing") and 2) see point about headphone jack above.
[+] [-] gamblor956|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markstos|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scarecrowbob|6 years ago|reply
They're kind of a Ship of Theseus, insofar as I have replaced every element but the drivers multiple times. I'm fairly handy with a soldering iron, and have been repairing them myself with parts for the manufacturer.
I think that this about the best case for repairs.
One replacement of the cord generates more plastic waste than the entirety of the airpods I use.
I've also been going through wired headphones at a rate of about 1 per year, as they are mechanically fragile. However, I don't think that this year I will be replacing the airpods I have been using for the last year... granted the battery will eventually fail. But to me, the lifetime on the airpods is so-far exceeding that of the wired earphones.
So am I wrong in thinking that between having replaceable components that are wasteful in themselves and the increased lifespan of the device, I'm just paying a rather large premium to -reduce- e-waste?
[+] [-] habosa|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GeekyBear|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vegardx|6 years ago|reply
In Norway these devices are covered for up to 5 years after date of purchase. This follows the product, so unlike some warranties it also covers second hand purchases as well.
[+] [-] gdulli|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|6 years ago|reply
In most cases, whether intentional or not, only the battery needs to be changed, but because of the way products are designed now, you have to throw the other 80% of the product in the trash.
When world's governments become a little more environmentally-conscious, they'll see this solution as a no-brainer, just like the EU saw a single charging standard necessary to combat electronics waste.
It's a shame to see "green Apple" spearhead the exact opposite of this movement with products that become environmental waste once their battery drops below 50% or so their original capacity.
[+] [-] pwinnski|6 years ago|reply
And now we have two attention-seeking Airpods revenue stories instead of one.
[+] [-] docdeek|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WilliamEdward|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] austenallred|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|6 years ago|reply
I thought Apple was always a bit vague about exact revenues by product and those kind of granular numbers. They would give numbers here or there but it was never clear what exactly those numbers meant.
[+] [-] dustingetz|6 years ago|reply
Twitter annualized revenue from Q419 is $3bn. Spotify 19Q2 revenue annualized is $6bn.
[+] [-] throwawayhhakdl|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yalogin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ogre_codes|6 years ago|reply
One of the big problems with the modern web is how quickly mis-information get amplified and how corrections get muffled.
[+] [-] elbelcho|6 years ago|reply
I'm not sure who is more trustworthy, but it generally seems like most people think $12B is too high and Cybart (the correction tweet guy) is closer to the actual sales figure
[+] [-] sjg007|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikestew|6 years ago|reply
I also still have the same pair of Oakelys I bought fifteen years ago. But I understand not everyone is so regimented (my wife, for instance), so I'm sure more than a few have made a trip through the wash. My wife lost hers for a while, so I used credit card points to buy a new pair. She then, of course, promptly found her prior pair and now she has two.
[+] [-] pwinnski|6 years ago|reply
You might be thinking in terms of a single AirPod, but for most practical purposes, the unit to track is the case that holds them, and it's not so easy to lose. Thanks to its existence, no AirPod should ever be in a pocket un-cased, so no risk of washing machines, either.
[+] [-] hombre_fatal|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fullshark|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oflannabhra|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmarschner|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pc86|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dharmon|6 years ago|reply
It was well-established in the comments on the previous article that many numbers were wildly off, so without any sources these tweets bring absolutely nothing new to the conversation.
[+] [-] GhettoMaestro|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michalpt|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikestew|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redmaverick|6 years ago|reply
Also, if they are detached from the iphone, wouldn't you lose them pretty easily?
[+] [-] rkangel|6 years ago|reply
You don't lose them because they live in a charging case and they go straight from ear to charging case. You never put them down anywhere else.
The difference with using them is bigger than you would imagine. There's no untangling of cable, no threading down clothes, no restriction on where you put your phone (assuming it's vaguely nearby). I can, for instance, put them in one handed while never taking my eyes off the road.
[+] [-] cjsawyer|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huebomont|6 years ago|reply