AirPods' sales spike barely dents market share for Beats and Bose

Have Apple's AirPods taken a large chunk out of Beats' share of the wi-fi headphone market? Honestly, the modern-day NPD Institution retail tracking records advise it is more of a nibble.
Are Apple's AirPods already taking down the marketplace percentage of Beats headphones, their corporate siblings? That became the implication of recent memories -- such as this one on CNET -- that mentioned facts from on line shopping analyst Slice Intelligence.

The numbers showed that Apple had taken a 26 percent percentage of wireless headphone income in December 2016 with its AirPods. The distinction earlier than and after the AirPods became to be had to shop for on line on December thirteen changed into dramatic: Beats, that is owned by Apple, dropped from a 24.1 percentage proportion to 15.4 percent at the same time as Bose went from a 10.5 percentage share to 16.1 percentage.

However, in line with Ben Arnold, an executive director and industry analyst at NPD Organization, the ones numbers paint an incomplete image of the wireless headphone marketplace and do not jibe with NPD's December numbers. Unlike Slice, which analyzes the e-mail receipts of 4.2 million on line shoppers, NPD's statistics displays brick-and-mortar and online sales, including Amazon.

according to NPD's December 2016 Weekly Retail tracking Carrier records, the AirPods had an outstanding debut but now not as awesome as Slice Intelligence suggests.

Beats had a 25 percentage share (unit income) and a 46 percent share (dollar sales)
Apple had a 2 percentage proportion (unit sales) and three percent proportion (dollar income)
Bose had eight percent (unit sales) and 19 percent (dollar sales)
LG had 10 percent (unit sales) and seven percent (greenback income) with Sony at 7 percent (unit sales) and 6 percentage (dollar income)
Plantronics and Jaybird were at round 2 percentage unit sales each but Apple is already neck-and-neck with them after best one partial month of sales
"Apple being capable of seize 2 percentage of the market in units and three percent in dollars with one product in its debut month is enormous, given how big the headphone market is," Arnold said.
Again in December 2015, NPD pegged Beats' wireless headphone income at 24 percentage (unit sales) and 49 percent (greenback sales), very close to its proportion a year later.

"The Bluetooth headphone marketplace grew 51 percent over the past yr (in dollars) so the fact that Beats become capable of preserve share and its position inside the market manner its income grew as rapid because the market did."

Presumably, Apple will retain to advantage marketplace proportion with its AirPods (the current facts handiest displays  weeks of AirPods sales), but Beats tons-predicted BeatsX wireless headphone changed into delayed until after the release of the AirPods. (Conspiracy theorists would possibly argue that Apple behind schedule them to ensure it had a clean runway for the AirPods, which might be priced almost identically.)

In the long run, the question is whether or not Apple's completely wireless earphones will cannibalize sales from its very own logo (Beats) or declare it from other brands. We'll ought to wait and see.