The AirPods Are Nice But Apple Also Needs EarPods 2
Apple should have included wireless headphones with the sale of every iPhone 7. That part I’m convinced of. If wireless is the future I find it odd that every one received wired headphones and an adapter to continue using their old wired headphones. The question is at what cost could they have went wireless or how could they have done it?
I would have offered two distinct lines of wireless headphones. A lower priced unit without the W1 chip, accelerometers, infrared sensors, dual-beaming microphones, and charging case. This is where all your cost is. The AirPods look like an engineering marvel when it comes to convenience because of all the technology packed into them. But it arguably drives the cost too high.
EarPods II
I would like to have seen a de-contented version of the AirPods that sold for around the $29-$69 range. Apple could have bundled this with every iPhone 7 that they sold and millions of customers would have experienced the joy of wireless for the first time. It even could have become the status symbol of 2016/2017 showing that you had the latest iPhone hotness.
Producing a set of conventional bluetooth headphones should have been fairly easy for Apple. And due to their massive scale they could possibly do it cheaper than anyone else while still preserving their healthy gross margins. Leaving out the W1 chip and the extra sensors should have allowed for much cheaper manufacturing cost.
But that also would have meant that the efficient battery management that the W1 makes possible wouldn’t be available. So any EarPods II would have looked much more like all the other currently available bluetooth headphones available today only with Apple’s design spin.
AirPods Enhanced
If Apple had produced a set of low-cost wireless EarPods they would have been free to produce an even better set of AirPods. As great as the AirPods are today, Apple is still taking some heat for not making them sound better. To keep the cost even where it is now at $159 a pair, the acoustical properties don’t sound all that different from a regular set of $29 EarPods.
To be fair, I think that Apple’s current EarPods sound pretty good. They were a huge improvement over their older earbuds that they used to sell. But they don’t sound anywhere near as good as my favorite wireless headphones the Beats PowerBeats 2s. Nor should they, considering that my PowerBeats 2s cost me $199. But if I spent $159 on a set of Apple AirPods, I’m going to expect a lot more in terms of sound quality. Closer to PowerBeats 2 level than EarPods level.
But what if Apple was able to sell the AirPods for $299-$499? With a target gross margin of 40% that would mean that Apple had an additional $84-$206 to spend on materials. With Apple’s purchasing power I’m betting that they could start to rival low-volume boutique headphone makers for sound quality. But at a lower price.
Amazing sounding headphones for well under a thousand dollars would have shifted the whole storyline from “you’re paying $159 for wireless headphones that sound like $29 EarPods” to “you no longer need wires and a thousand dollars to get audiophile quality”.
Conclusion
The AirPods look like an engineering masterpiece of convenience. I haven’t used them yet but it seems to resolve most of the pain points in dealing with bluetooth. And they seem like the perfect companion to the Apple Watch. Since the watch allows you granular control of your music without having to use Siri but the speaker in the watch is too weak to hear well. But Apple isn’t going to get credit for this convenience with the crowd who is mainly concerned about audio quality.
Forking their wireless audio product line into two would have given them the best of both worlds. They could have lived up to their ideal that wireless is the way of the future and given millions of people their first taste without sacrificing their gross margins. Second, it would have allowed them to take the AirPods upmarket and avoid the criticism that “it sounds like my cheap EarPods”.
EarPods II
I would like to have seen a de-contented version of the AirPods that sold for around the $29-$69 range. Apple could have bundled this with every iPhone 7 that they sold and millions of customers would have experienced the joy of wireless for the first time. It even could have become the status symbol of 2016/2017 showing that you had the latest iPhone hotness.
Producing a set of conventional bluetooth headphones should have been fairly easy for Apple. And due to their massive scale they could possibly do it cheaper than anyone else while still preserving their healthy gross margins. Leaving out the W1 chip and the extra sensors should have allowed for much cheaper manufacturing cost.
But that also would have meant that the efficient battery management that the W1 makes possible wouldn’t be available. So any EarPods II would have looked much more like all the other currently available bluetooth headphones available today only with Apple’s design spin.
AirPods Enhanced
If Apple had produced a set of low-cost wireless EarPods they would have been free to produce an even better set of AirPods. As great as the AirPods are today, Apple is still taking some heat for not making them sound better. To keep the cost even where it is now at $159 a pair, the acoustical properties don’t sound all that different from a regular set of $29 EarPods.
To be fair, I think that Apple’s current EarPods sound pretty good. They were a huge improvement over their older earbuds that they used to sell. But they don’t sound anywhere near as good as my favorite wireless headphones the Beats PowerBeats 2s. Nor should they, considering that my PowerBeats 2s cost me $199. But if I spent $159 on a set of Apple AirPods, I’m going to expect a lot more in terms of sound quality. Closer to PowerBeats 2 level than EarPods level.
But what if Apple was able to sell the AirPods for $299-$499? With a target gross margin of 40% that would mean that Apple had an additional $84-$206 to spend on materials. With Apple’s purchasing power I’m betting that they could start to rival low-volume boutique headphone makers for sound quality. But at a lower price.
Amazing sounding headphones for well under a thousand dollars would have shifted the whole storyline from “you’re paying $159 for wireless headphones that sound like $29 EarPods” to “you no longer need wires and a thousand dollars to get audiophile quality”.
Conclusion
The AirPods look like an engineering masterpiece of convenience. I haven’t used them yet but it seems to resolve most of the pain points in dealing with bluetooth. And they seem like the perfect companion to the Apple Watch. Since the watch allows you granular control of your music without having to use Siri but the speaker in the watch is too weak to hear well. But Apple isn’t going to get credit for this convenience with the crowd who is mainly concerned about audio quality.
Forking their wireless audio product line into two would have given them the best of both worlds. They could have lived up to their ideal that wireless is the way of the future and given millions of people their first taste without sacrificing their gross margins. Second, it would have allowed them to take the AirPods upmarket and avoid the criticism that “it sounds like my cheap EarPods”.
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