Is the AirPods Pro 2 Enough to Maintain Apple's Hold Over the Hearables Market?

September 2022

Sustainability & Smart Cities

Adam Wears

Digital Marketing Manager

Last week, Apple unveiled the AirPods Pro 2. This new hearable represents the first major upgrade to the AirPods Pro range since the AirPods Pro 1 was launched in 2019, and boasts features including improved battery life, new touch controls and location features, and expanded charger compatibility.

Importantly, the AirPods Pro 2 was also announced to be using Apple’s new H2 chip, which will allow users to benefit from new audio functionalities including:
 

• Personalised spatial audio, which allows users to create spatial sound profiles based on the shape of their ears and head – enabling precise, immersive listening experiences.
• Improved active noise cancellation, which is twice as powerful as that coupled with AirPods Pro 1.
• Adaptive transparency, which reduces environmental noises such as traffic, construction, and loudspeakers – enabling clear audio and two-way communication in loud, busy settings.

Consumer interest in #hearables – that is, ear-based #wearables that utilise on-device computation to supply information, content, and services to users – have grown significantly in recent years, thanks to vendors including Apple, Bose Corporation, and Nuheara driving new use cases across healthcare, assistive support, productivity enhancement, and industrial communications.

Indeed, our latest research forecasts that hearables shipments will grow 30% over the next two years, as demand for hearables serving emerging use cases continues to grow. This research also identified Apple as a leader within the hearables market due to their expansive offerings covering emerging use cases, alongside a commitment to providing consumers with high-end audio experiences.

What Does This Announcement Mean for Apple?

This announcement will further strengthen Apple’s position within the assistive hearables market, which, in recent years, has come under attack from traditional hearing aid manufacturers leveraging their market position to launch their own hearables; touting similar feature sets, at competitive price points.

However, given that these vendors’ offerings will take some time to enter the mainstream –particularly in markets that have public or universal healthcare services, as these typically provide devices that are still behind the state of the art – there is still an opportunity for Apple to fully consolidate its standing with expansive, differentiated offerings, such as the AirPods Pro 2.

The inclusion of adaptive transparency alongside improved active noise cancellation will also be vital in growing adoption of AirPods in industrial settings, where clear communication and hands-free recording of information is a necessity. Indeed, during its announcement, Apple demonstrated the ability of the AirPods Pro 2 to provide high-quality audio while a user was standing next to working construction machinery. Given the competitive nature of the hearables market, Apple should press this opportunity that this new addressable market presents, with the goal of expanding revenue streams and capturing industrial stakeholders within its ecosystem.

Innovative features like personalised spatial audio and adaptive transparency are also key to mitigating the impact of forthcoming right-to-repair legislation, as well as the anticipated economic downturn on total hearables shipments, and by extension, hardware revenue.

What Does This Announcement Mean for End Users?

Juniper Research believes that consumers, particularly those with hearing difficulties, will benefit significantly from the inclusion of personalised spatial audio. Traditional hearing aids (and some hearables) require fitting and testing to be conducted by an audiologist, providing a major inconvenience for consumers – particularly during the pandemic, when these services could not be offered in light of the social distancing measures introduced in many markets worldwide.

However, the fitting of the AirPods Pro 2 only requires users to possess an iPhone with a TrueDepth camera – which comes as standard on all iPhone models launched after November 2017 (beginning with the iPhone X). This synergy immediately affords the AirPods Pro 2 a large addressable user base; many of whom will prefer the convenience of a known ecosystem, as opposed to the unfamiliarity that comes with utilising third-party hardware and software.