Why Everyone is Copying AirPods: Explained!

[Music] all right it's 2020 and it's impossible to ignore why are so many companies copying air pods so about four years ago in 2016 Apple got on stage and announced the iPhone 7 to the world which was the first iPhone ever with courageously no headphone jack and during that same presentation on the same stage 27 minutes later they unveiled their newest creation air pods a pair of completely wireless headphones one earbud in each ear in this convenient magnetic case that pairs instantly with the iPhone and solves everyone's headphone jack problem see on stage they explained that if they want to get to their vision of this totally Wireless future where we don't need cables or cords anymore they have to get rid of the headphone jack and eventually all the other rest of the ports like the Lightning port - in theory so this was the first brave courageous step towards that future but it really comes down to one word courage the courage to move on do something new that betters all of us but what they had also actually just conveniently rediscovered was that selling people the solution to a problem that you just created a half an hour earlier was a brilliant way to make a ton of money on top of already making a ton of money like it's no secret that Apple makes most of its profit from the iPhone and then things connected to the iPhone we've talked about the ecosystem before they're smart they've made services like iCloud Drive Apple pay Apple care all these things that capitalize on the massive customer base that is the iPhone to make significantly more money from it it's a smart business so this isn't a new concept for Apple we're just now adding dongles and wireless headphones to that list but of course it doesn't all work unless it's at least a pretty good product and it was people love air pods they were definitely not the first wireless earbuds ever but the combination of the convenience and the little case they came in and putting them right next to the iPhone and of course how well they worked with it instant pairing that whole thing made them an instant hit and of course they were the number one selling headphones in the world a year later and so now today it's estimated that with air pods - and now air pods Pro and the world charger and with the tens of millions of sales Apple has made around eight billion dollars from air pods eight billion dollars that might not sound like a huge percentage of Apple's business because it's not but just for some perspective if you broke that off into a separate company and incorporated a new head phone company air pods Inc separate from Apple that company's revenues by itself would be enough to be a fortune 500 company and probably somewhere in the middle of the pack more than the bottom two or three hundred of those and plus they're expected to jump up again in 2020 as iPhone 5s and iPhone 6 owners continue to upgrade and the headphone jack continues to disappear so now as air pod sales are taking off and going to orbit a lot of the companies that were ridiculing Apple for getting rid of the headphone jack along with you and me well they took a look at this again and saw that they kind of wanted a piece of that pie like this would be a silly business decision not to get involved in this huge new market that's basically being created in front of their eyes so they did the same thing Google well they made a commercial calling out the headphone jack a year after Apple got rid of theirs then literally the next pixel that came out had no headphone jack and hey what do you know Google pixel buds now exists oneplus has been known to take their occasional jabs at Apple they made their remarks but two years after Apple their new one +60 had no headphone jack and their new wireless bullets headphones appeared as a convenient solution Huawei flagships don't have headphone jacks anymore either but they'll gladly sell you their new Huawei free buds to set you free of wires razors phones also don't have headphone jacks but you'll see their new hammerheads wireless earbuds I feel like I've seen that shape before Amazon will sell you echo buds Microsoft has announced their surface buds even the essential phone from a company that popped up on the map for one year and made one phone with no headphone jack also happened to make a hundred and fifty dollar attachable HD headphone jack adapter that is still listed on their site to this day it actually has nothing to do with air pod clones that's that's just funny but even Samsung has been one of the last major holdouts with a headphone jack in the Galaxy S but sure enough they got rid of that headphone jack on the Galaxy Note 10 and the S 20 I'm afraid to say it but that's next and they've been pushing galaxy buds that conveniently charge right on the back of the phone that you obviously got them for and all these are various different prices and have slightly different form factors and feature sets to differentiate them but they all basically do the same thing which is solve a problem that was just created the headphone jack is quickly disappearing it's becoming like an enthusiast feature and you see headlines about when a new headphone jack is included in a phone because it's sort of a noteworthy thing to see that again and of course you now see pretty much every major headphone company in the world scrambling to make their best wireless earbuds to also compete here so Audio Technica makes a pair Sony makes a pair I just got back from CES where I saw TCL is making a pair this is it's got the connection button on the back and flips open like that and there's magnets that hold the earbuds in like this is there air pause competitor even these companies that don't have a smart phone to connect it to are just trying to sell you something that you'd reasonably consider buying over air pods for some reason because this is a PI they got to get it on and then on top of all that there's the whole world of air pods clones and if you're thinking no no wait a minute these aren't clones they're all you know they have their differentiating features and they're slightly different no I'm talking about the ones that literally try to make themselves look exactly like air pods in an effort to basically convince you that you're getting the same thing for less money these are the ones that are not so well intentioned you might have seen these black ear pods floating around or some variant of them or if you just google ear pods clone there's a whole world of tws I 500s being sold or drop ships from various online retailers and there are even companies out there right now you might have already seen the singer feed that are using stolen footage from my ear pods Pro review and using them in Instagram ads to try to convince you to buy their fake drop shipped air pod clones it's everywhere so the bottom line is everyone pretty much everyone capable of making headphones in some way is now making small pocketable completely wireless earbuds that seal up in a case and connect to your phone so this has some pros and cons of course we all know the downsides which are if you want to listen to music through wired headphones you to carry a dongle everywhere and often the quality is substantially worse over Bluetooth audio than wired but also wireless audio is just not great yet it's getting there but if you've ever tried to edit a video or music with wireless headphones you know how bad the latency and the lag can get and you know we're talking about it's just not quite there yet but because of all that the upside is the same thing that created the downside which is that now everyone is trying to make the best possible wireless audio solution the best possible wireless headphones to try to beat air pots and we see this in the forms of all different types of features the reverse wireless charging on phones the Razer hammerheads focusing on and minimizing latency Sony's WF 1000 XM 3 doing active noise cancellation better than any other earbud I've ever heard and they pretty much all feature an assistant now - there's Syrian air pods which means there's Google assistant in pixel buds and many others Bixby and galaxy buds and Cortana in surface buds in theory anyway when those come out it means everyone's working towards a better world of wireless so that maybe this wireless future we've dreamed of isn't so far off after all now I have no excuse for they're like shameless blatant earpods ripoffs like these are just clearly trying to make a buck shamelessly trying to take advantage of people looking for a deal but the truth really is air pods are Apple's most impactful and successful product since the original iPhone and who wouldn't want to copy that thanks for watching catch you guys the next one pace

Channel: Marques Brownlee

Views: 5,234,674

Rating: 4.8916569 out of 5

Keywords: airpods, airpods clones, blackpods, fake airpods, copying airpods, AirPods Pro, AirPods pro vs, are fake airpods good, MKBHD

Id: zHAB4qDsgKY

Length: 8min 20sec (500 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 15 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/a_shoresh5]

Ngl I feel like Marques missed the point.

The headphone jack disappearing was just a minor factor. Why didn’t people just use the included lighting EarPods, a dongle for their existing headphones, or other existing wireless headphones? AirPods‘ convince and simplicity factor is the reason. No one was forced to buy specifically AirPods.

Also AirPods were not an instant success; it was quite the opposite. They were ridiculed for nearly a year for the price and look before they became mainstream enough.

Also also he complains that they’re bad for video editing due to latency, but were they ever meant for it? Apple still includes the headphone jack on Macs for this reason, so I’m not sure why he brought this up.

[u/[deleted]]

No joke you guys, I actually watched this video from start to finish in 144p.