Airpods become the spotlight at the much-reported MacBook Apple's fall product event on Monday, as the company updated its AirPods line for the first time in two years. The $179 AirPods 3 promises spatial audio, better sound quality, longer-lasting batteries, a new shape design, and a sound that can be customized to what the ear hears, a feature already available on Apple's high-end AirPods Pro line. They also have shorter stems and no plastic tips, subtle tweaks that highlight how the once-derided design continues to change.
Apple also dropped the price of the second generation of AirPods to $129, which could help the company attract more customers and compete with a growing number of similar products from Amazon, Google and Samsung.Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said AirPods could account for about 5 percent of Apple's total revenue this year, and he predicted revenue could grow 20 percent by 2022, thanks in large part to new models and the cheaper AirPods 2.
Apple has unveiled the next generation of AirPods. Part of the appeal of AirPods is that they work seamlessly. Like many Apple products, they are simple to configure, intuitive to use, easy to pair with apple's other devices and well designed. Apple also removed the 3.5-inch headphone jack from the iPhone 7 in 2016, a controversial move that angered some consumers but later spurred the use of wireless headphones and headsets.
"Apple managed to get something out of the iPhone case…" Customers are then directed to buy additional, higher-priced accessories, "said David McQueen, research director at ABI Research. "Apple is basically saying, these are aspirational products, and if you can afford a phone, you can buy our accessories for another few hundred dollars or so." In addition to AirPods 2 and 3, it is premium AirPods Pro costs $259 and Apple's AirPods Max headphones cost $550.
Ramon Llamas, a director at market research firm IDC, said offering a range of products would not only encourage more consumers to buy Apple products but also allow them to be more deeply integrated into Apple's ecosystem of devices and apps.
"Because [AirPods] are so engrained into the Apple ecosystem with Apple Music and Apple Fitness+, Apple loyalists — of which there are millions — prefer to stay with the Apple brand instead of considering another brand," Llamas said.
