TWS Headphones Heading For The Front Desk? 5G, Cost Reduction Is The Key.

After Apple launched its first AirPods for more than three years, the domestic mobile phone manufacturers finally followed up the wireless Bluetooth headset products.

In 2019 alone, HUAWEI, OPPO, vivo, millet, Meizu, realme and other manufacturers announced the launch of TWS true Bluetooth headset, ranging from 100 yuan to over 1000 yuan. The increase in home work caused by the epidemic seems to be boosting this trend.

The industry chain company's share price is also on the right track. According to the "wireless headset" concept stock of Oriental wealth statistics, since November 2019, the related stock prices have shown a steep slope upward performance. Even after the first day of February 3rd, the concept of "wireless headphones" also dropped by 112 points.

Compared with wireless earphones and wireless headphones, TWS really became the fastest growing and largest product category in 2019. According to Canalys's latest statistics, the personal intelligent audio equipment market composed of these three products collectively ushered in the strongest year in 2019, of which TWS shipped 183% in the third quarter of 2019, which left the other two categories within a year. In the 2019 year, global shipments are expected to exceed 350 million units.

The sudden outbreak of TWS, on the one hand, is related to the breakthroughs in Bluetooth connection technology and the maturity of related earphone solutions. On the other hand, facing the 5G era, searching for more diversified entry products becomes the key to the traditional mobile phone manufacturers. Smart headphones appear on the ecological list of OV official list.

At present, the technology of TWS headphones still has room for further optimization, and apple is still the leader in this field. Can domestic manufacturers take the advantage of 5G and technological breakthrough + industrial chain advantage to occupy a higher position?

TWS history of growth

When Apple's TWS just came out, the mainstream product of Bluetooth headset was mainly in the form of binaural wired configuration. At that time, there was still a delay in Bluetooth transmission compared with wired transmission.

Since then, the rise of mobile phone products has been increasingly pursuing "integration" to a large extent, thus gradually eliminating 3.5mm headphone holes. Constrained by cost factors, Bluetooth headset is hard to become a "gift" of the purchase of the earphone as well as the wired headphones, thus stimulating the demand of related categories.

Therefore, AirPods is not "the best way out". Even today, there are still a lot of market feedback on the "easy to lose" product. Not to mention the apple TWS headset that has launched the third generation of products is still selling at a high price of nearly 2000 yuan.

In the Android market which pays more attention to cost performance, the transmission technology and the overall plan have achieved rapid growth in the past two years, bringing impetus to the TWS wind.

Cai Zhuoshao, an analyst at Ji Bang consulting, told the twenty-first Century economic news reporter that early TWS design would lead to more serious transmission delays. The transmission path was mainly connected to the left ear headphones by mobile Bluetooth, and then the right earphones were connected by left earphones, which would undoubtedly bring greater pressure to the power consumption of the left earphones.

So there is the TWS+ solution, that is, transmitting headphones from one phone to two earphones at the same time. The development of this kind of information transmission will be the key to the evolution of TWS headphones.

The evolution of wireless transmission technology has played a certain role. Canalys senior analyst Liu Jiansen told reporters that in general, the upgrading of every generation of Bluetooth technology will further enhance its transmission capability and data transmission speed. Today, the rapid advance of TWS headphones is essentially related to the three major effects of connectivity, stability and low latency.

Pan Feng, an analyst at Tianfeng securities, also pointed out that in recent years, the popularity of Bluetooth 5 technology has solved the technical bottleneck of dual transmission and low latency. At the same time, the rise of a group of domestic acoustic chip design companies has provided low cost and mass production potential. These are the main reasons for boosting TWS's growth in China.

"The growth of TWS is a typical growth path of technology industry, technological innovation liberated supply, application scenarios bring demand, supply pull demand to achieve positive feedback. We believe that TWS will bring high penetration rate and growth potential in the next few years, just like the emergence of intelligent machines ten years ago.

But Cai Zhuo Shao does not think so. He pointed out that Bluetooth 5 is 4 better than before. The X version is good, but it's not the main reason for the TWS Bluetooth headset. In fact, early AirPods and other products all use Bluetooth 4. X design, most of the Bluetooth chips also use only 4. X technology. Until the second half of 2018 or even the end of the year, TWS Bluetooth headset became popular and drove the market development, then began to demand for Bluetooth 5. The chip factory gradually launched the Bluetooth 5 chip. Therefore, we should say that the popularity of TWS Bluetooth headset has driven the demand for Bluetooth 5.

At present, TWS is still in the stage of continuous technological advance. The next important threshold is the widespread landing of active noise reduction (ANC).

Cai Zhuoshao told reporters that most of the TWS products currently do not carry ANC. "Because there are basically a set of acoustic components on earphones that are used for playing music and telephone communication. To achieve the ANC function, additional acoustic components are needed. The total number of microphones in one ear will reach more than 2, which will naturally increase the cost. Therefore, ANC is not popular in the existing products. In the future, with the development of voice assistant applications, it will be gradually taken seriously.

More than half price reduction of chip module

It is not the same as the mobile phone market. There are three main forces in the TWS Headset Market: the traditional mobile phone manufacturers, the traditional earphone manufacturers, the third party application extension market, and the latter mainly includes NetEase cloud music and so on.

But apple, which pioneered for several years, is a well deserved king in the TWS field.

According to Strategy Analytics, a survey firm, apple accounted for more than 50% of the total market share in the global market in 2019, while its nearest competitor Samsung and millet accounted for less than 10% of the total market share.

More notable is income performance. Apple's AirPods products accounted for about 70% of the total market income in 2019, and a huge gap with Samsung and Beas, which ranked two or three.

In the short term, Apple's position is still hard to shake. A number of analysts pointed out that AirPods had formed its own technical barriers, and that Apple would be willing to continue to promote parts and functions in the TWS field with the help of high price.

Of course, the huge Android market also needs TWS headphones that match their mobile phones. These blank markets have great potential. What's more, mobile phone manufacturers are aiming to build 5G ecosystem. Smart headphones will be an important entry, and become the core carrier of health management, voice payment, voice assistant and other applications.

Liu Jiansen pointed out to the twenty-first Century economic news reporter that in view of this, compared with the traditional earphone manufacturers with professional advantages, mobile phone manufacturers have the comprehensive advantages of the industrial chain from processors to chip modules to mass production, and will be more competitive. However, manufacturers need to fully tap the landing of mobile phone and TWS linkage applications as soon as possible.

"How to make a plan together is still a test for mobile phone manufacturers. That's not easy. Headphones will not only simply listen to music or voice transmission, but also have the ability to handle speech, noise reduction and sound processing, and even achieve the function of hearing aids. He also said that mobile phone manufacturers will not exclude future research on headphone noise reduction chip design, in order to get better results, as Apple's decision today.

And the trend of this two level differentiation is likely to continue even after the Android camp has entered. Cai Zhuoshao told reporters that the TWS headphones would be divided into two markets: the low price market was below 100 US dollars or even below 30 dollars, and the components of these products would naturally be biased towards cost orientation, creating the demand of zero chips and other components.

"But another market will focus on domestic well-known brands to provide voice assistant and voice applications. In order to enhance these performance, manufacturers will strengthen the acoustic components including active noise immunity, improve chip performance, increase memory, and enable TWS headphones to have some basic intelligent applications, so that they can build brand value. On the other hand, high priced TWS Bluetooth earphones can also make a higher profit." He continued.

Driven by the industrial chain, the cost of TWS scheme has been substantially reduced. Strategy Analytics pointed out in the Research Report: in the past six months, the price of chip module has been reduced by half, which opens the door for dozens or even hundreds of new manufacturers that provide cheap and completely wireless Bluetooth headphones.

With the aggressive attack of mobile phone manufacturers, the main body of TWS headphones will also change greatly in the future.

Pan is expected to enter the mobile phone brand in 2020 to clean the TWS market for a year. It is estimated that mobile phone brands may occupy 80% of the total, which is comparable to the top six mobile phone brands in terms of smart phone market share. CICC also pointed out that apple / non apple TWS increased by 148%/176% to 62 million /5800 in 2019, but the penetration rate was still low (11%/3%). Overall, apple / non apple TWS is expected to achieve a year-on-year growth of 55%/79% in 2020.