Canalys: Exploring the opportunities and challenges of open-back headphones

Different types of participants

Participants were divided into two categories: emerging brands and established brands, as to whether they had significantly increased their awareness of open-back headphones.

Emerging brands such as Oladance , Shokz and Cleer are standing out in the open-back headphone market.

Oladance stands out with its solid R&D strength and customized marketing plans for specific groups. As a founding team from Bose, it has been deeply involved in the audio field for many years, laying a solid foundation for OWS's acoustic research and development. In addition, Oladance has successfully increased customer stickiness by tapping into vertical user groups, especially the highly loyal group of running enthusiasts that was accidentally discovered during the initial crowdfunding process, and further expanded brand awareness through e-commerce media.

Shokz has moved upstream in the supply chain, developed its own skin-friendly silicone, pursued the ultimate skin feel, and expanded its channels from offline to online and from one point to multiple points. In the early stage, they accumulated core users through offline channels such as BestBuy, Costco and offline cycling shops, and then placed advertisements through e-commerce channels such as Amazon to expand the international market and achieved remarkable results.

Cleer pays more attention to the precise matching of application scenarios and product intelligence. They provide three versions with different functions: music version, sports version and game version to meet the needs of different groups of people. In terms of intelligence, Cleer also provides breakthrough intelligent security management functions, such as intelligent anti-loss and sedentary reminder, making it unique in the open headphone market.

According to the experience of the above three players, in order to successfully stand out from the competition, both strength and marketing are indispensable. Strength means excellent product technology, focusing on continuous technological innovation and research and development, constantly updating and iterating, and providing consumers with excellent experience with hard power; marketing requires customized marketing and channel strategies to continuously improve brand awareness and establish brand image in order to open up a broader market for the brand.

For well-known brand players, they can be divided into audio manufacturers (Sony, Bose, JBL, etc.) and mobile phone brands (Xiaomi, Huawei, etc.) according to whether they provide ecological experience. They have also made different explorations in the field of open headphones. Sony continues to explore consumer preferences through open headphones with different shapes, while other audio brands such as Bose and JBL choose more conservative ear-hook headphones as the first open headphones. Although audio manufacturers have responded quickly to new forms of headphones and actively laid out new forms, they have only tried new segments and have not allocated too many resources.

Among mobile phone manufacturers, Xiaomi released its first bone conduction headset at the end of October 2023, while Huawei launched its first ear-clip OWS headset FreeClip in December. The novel form factor design and lossless sound quality provided by the Huawei ecosystem have attracted great attention from the market. Other mobile phone manufacturers are still on the sidelines.

Opportunities and Challenges

However, although the open-back headphones market is full of opportunities, it also faces a series of challenges. As more and more players enter the market, especially for mobile phone manufacturers, they have natural advantages in channels and ecological binding, which will have a certain impact on the current competitive landscape and squeeze the living space of other types of players. Secondly, market education is also one of the difficulties. At present, open-back headphones are still in the market education stage. Consumers' awareness of open-back headphones needs to be improved. At present, mature products are priced high and the cost of trial and error is high, which makes some potential users wait and see about trying open-back headphones. Entry-level products are mostly provided by white-label players, which can only meet the basic needs of users. The price is low but the product is not mature enough, which can easily have a negative impact on market education.

Manufacturers are considering addressing these challenges from two perspectives:

• Actively explore diverse application scenarios : Open-back headphones are currently limited to sports scenarios. Manufacturers can actively explore other application scenarios based on this, such as communication calls in office environments, to tap into more potential market demand.
• Strengthen market education : Deliver the unique advantages of open-back headphones to consumers through advertising, social media and other channels. Build brand awareness, emphasize product features, and improve users' understanding of this product type.

In summary, although the open-earphone market faces challenges of fierce competition and increased market awareness, manufacturers are expected to address these challenges by expanding diverse application scenarios and strengthening market education, develop more potential markets for open-earphones, and achieve sustainable growth in the open-earphone market segment.

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