The two web giants are launching wireless headphones to be used to counter AirPods and expand the market for Google Assistant and Alexa
Apple’s AirPods, that is, the high-tech, wireless and designer earbuds that allow you to listen to music from any recent device from the bitten apple, have opened up such an interesting market that Google and Amazon would be launching their own versions of this device.
Google and Amazon’s anti-AirPods are expected to arrive in the second half of 2019, but by that time Apple could react to the competition by presenting a new version of the AirPods, with new features such as wireless charging and health sensors. Ming-Chi Kuo, the well-known financial analyst from Taiwan who has become famous for his predictions, almost always correct, about Apple’s future products, is convinced of this. Ming-Chi Kuo bases his latest hypothesis on some internal reports of two suppliers of Google and Amazon: Goertek and Unitech, which deal respectively with assembly and printed circuit boards for consumer electronics.
What will be the wireless headphones of Google and Amazon
These reports show that the two companies are organizing to provide Google and Amazon two new high quality alternatives to AirPods. These two products would enter the long line of competitors of the Apple headphones: the market is in fact full of similar devices, from Chinese clones from a few tens of dollars to products far more advanced and expensive as those made by Bang & Olufsen, Bose, Master & Dynamic and other players in the field of audio accessories hi-fi for very refined ears.
Apple itself, after all, took the idea of AirPods from the Bragi Dash earphones launched on the market in late 2015, well before the headphones made in Cupertino. Google and Amazon are more than entitled to create their own alternative to AirPods and integrate them into their respective ecosystems: Google Home-Assistant and Amazon Echo-Alexa. “We believe the success of AirPods has caught the attention of Google and Amazon, and these two companies will launch AirPods-like products in the second half of 2019. The combined sales of two brands will probably reach 10-20 million units,” Ming-Chi Kuo explains.
The new AirPods will arrive in 2019
Apple’s response, according to the analyst, will not be long in coming: among the features that could be introduced are support for the “Hey Siri” voice command, water resistance, wireless charging and integration into the earbuds of some form of health sensor. Ming-Chi Kuo further explains, “The ear is a perfect area to detect different health information. [The sensors in the AirPods] could be integrated with the Apple Watch to offer better health monitoring in the future.”