
AirPods revenue does not exceed Spotify, Twitter, Snapchat, and Shopify revenue - coloneltcb
https://twitter.com/neilcybart/status/1214867813464236032
======
crazygringo
The HN title is ambiguous. The point of the Twitter thread is that it doesn't
exceed them _combined_. But then he writes:

> _(By the way, the article in question put AirPods revenue at $12 billion in
> 2019. The actual number will end up being more like half that - closer to
> $7.5 billion.)_

Which means it still exceeds each of them _separately_.

Just to put that in context for everyone here. If his analysis is correct,
AirPods are _still_ bigger than Spotify, which is fascinating to think about.

~~~
ecmascript
I don't get whats weird about that? You need some kind of device in order to
listen to Spotify and today there is a lot of services competing with Spotify.

Spotify also have a huge number of free accounts that rely on ads which
probably means less profits for Spotify. Everyone still needs to actually
spend money to get the device but you don't really need to spend money to
listen to music. Also, while Airpods is a "one off" purchase, a lot of people
don't like having subscriptions (like me for example).

I have spent hundreds of dollars the last years on headphones (not Airpods
tho) but I hesitate for a long time before starting a subscription service.
Not because I cannot afford to, I just do not like subscription services.

Spotify, Youtube Music etc provide a free service. With adblocker,
music.youtube.com is totally free without any ads so I have a really hard time
to justify the cost of another paid service like Spotify.

Edit: if you downvote this, please comment on why? What is incorrect about my
statements?

~~~
crazygringo
Just that it used to be the opposite for most people.

When I was in my teens, I spent _waaay_ more money on CD's than I ever did on
my Discman and headphones.

The fact that it's now the norm to spend more money on your audio hardware
than on what you listen to is just an interesting reversal.

~~~
ecmascript
Well, with the advent of internet and better computers I guess producing music
and distributing it became so much cheaper and faster the price dropped.

Since also many (like me) pirated their way in their teens I never purchased
many cds. I got an mp3 early from japan with 512mb of disk space. This was
huge, all my classmates had like 128mb or less.

It was clear for me anyway that I would never pay a lot for the music because
there was simply no reason to. I haven't really experienced the time where it
was a norm to spend a lot of money on cds.

I am 29 and this kind of experience you have seems to become more and more
uncommon as time passes ;)

~~~
bradstewart
This made me remember the days of having to decide which songs to put on my
little 128MB Rio MP3 player every week. Such a strange "problem" to think
about now.

------
habosa
In San Francisco (so at the center of the bubble) I've been shocked by the
adoption of the AirPods pro. I see them everywhere now and they've only been
out for two months or so. Add the regular AirPods in and they're downright
ubiquitous.

These are $250 headphones. I've loved music all my life and I used to get
weird looks from people when I told them I was spending $150-200 on nice
earbuds with better sound quality. For about a decade everyone was pretty
happy with the white iPod headphones that came in the box.

Thinking back I guess Beats opened the floodgates of "normal people having
expensive headphones" and also "headphones as fashion" and then AirPods came
in and added a whole convenience layer on top which seems to be driving people
to buy in droves.

So yeah, Apple's raking it in. Guess I shouldn't be surprised.

~~~
wjoe
Are the AirPods actually good headphones? Personally I don't consider the
basic Apple headphones that come with iPhones to be either good audio quality
or comfortable design, and the AirPods look identcal aside from the lack of
wires (but I've never used them).

I can sort of understand spending $200 on really good quality, comfortable
headphones, though I wouldn't myself - if only because I'll inevitably break
or lose them after a few months, even more of an issue with these wireless
headphones. But if they don't check either of those boxes, I can't fathom why
they're so popular, aside from Apple marketing.

~~~
ogre_codes
My ears are not great so it's really hard for me to speak about audio quality.
But in my eyes, they are comparable to some of the more mid-range earbuds in
terms of sound quality. I'd love to try the AB2 due to the sound isolation &
noise cancellation, but can't justify buying a new set when my current set
still work so well.

The reason I bought the original Airpods and will likely buy the newer ones is
all about convenience. I wear them on my mountain bike and commuting and being
truly wireless is invaluable. Turns out for me the #1 way headphones pop out
is due to snagging the cable on something (hands, branches, clothing, etc).
Also, being able to quickly connect and switch devices, is fantastic.

If cables truly don't bother you, then there are plenty of great options for
wired headsets which offer better quality sound. For me, I can't even sit at
my desk and code anymore without getting annoyed now.

------
markstos
Not only are AirPods very profitable, but with a non-user-serviceable battery,
they are also disposable. This way users can enjoy buying new $200 AirPods
every couple years and Apple gets the recurring revenue to pour to climate
initiatives like combating the rise of e-waste.

~~~
habosa
People keep mentioning this point and I'm a little confused. In 2020 a non-
user-replaceable battery seems to be the standard situation for all my
electronics, not just AirPods. I'm not saying it's a good thing I just don't
get why this criticism tends to mostly come up around AirPods.

~~~
ApolloFortyNine
With wired headphones, people can keep them for years, decades even. Many of
the popular sets of 'serious' headphones have been around for over a decade.

So it goes hand in hand with removing the headphone jack. Remove the ability
to not require a battery, and then don't allow people to replace the battery.

~~~
gurkendoktor
> With wired headphones, people can keep them for years, decades even.

My wired headphones all broke after about ~2 years (100-150€ models from
Sennheiser and Teufel, plus the ones shipped with phones). In my Beats Studio
3, the hinges broke before the battery even degraded. As an extreme example,
my 1st-gen iPad still lasts hours, but hasn't seen a software update in many
years.

Planned obsolescence ticks me off, but I don't feel it has gotten any worse
with non-replaceable batteries. Everything you buy breaks after 2 years,
that's just how the incentives work for companies.

~~~
JakeTheAndroid
Conversely I have had multiple pairs of Sennheiser and Audiotechnicas for over
5 years now, all with wires, and they are still work phenomenally. I have used
them as daily drivers (I keep the Audiotechnicas at work, and my Senn HDs are
for the commute, flights, hanging out at home, etc) and they still produce
amazing sound quality and I only had to replace a cable once and buy one set
of ear-cups (I like over ears not in-ears).

I find Sennheiser and Audiotechnica build quality products that last if you
buy their higher end stuff. In the case of AT, the M50x's aren't even that
expensive and they are as good as the day I bought them.

~~~
noisem4ker
I can vouch for AKG myself. I've been using a pair of K530 LTD headphones
daily for 11,5 years now. Sound never changed. The velvet pads and the leather
band are still intact. Only the letters of the logo have come off. I reckon
they aren't even of the supposedly better built made-in-Austria series.

------
pwinnski
So this tweeter's estimate is that it's still bigger than AMD, Spotify,
Square, Twitter, Snapchat, and Shopify, just not combined. And not bigger than
Adobe or Nvidia.

And now we have two attention-seeking Airpods revenue stories instead of one.

------
docdeek
Pretty sure that the comments I read on HN yesterday said more or less the
same thing.

~~~
WilliamEdward
I think the key issue is that it wasn't taken down? So good that the
commenters know it's wrong, but they just changed the title which doesn't
solve the problem.

~~~
CathedralBorrow
Apple doesn't release any AirPod sales figures, so all analysis is going to
include a margin of error.

Where would you draw the line in general for acceptable accuracy of discussion
about unknown things, so we can keep the discussion above the line and take
down everything below it?

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austenallred
It seems more that there are different analyses done that come to different
conclusions, as Apple hasn’t released the full revenues by product line.

~~~
duxup
That was my first thought when I saw the inital observations.

I thought Apple was always a bit vague about exact revenues by product and
those kind of granular numbers. They would give numbers here or there but it
was never clear what exactly those numbers meant.

------
dustingetz
Valuations follow a power law distribution and the estimate was off by only a
factor of 2, which is basically equal as far as power laws are concerned. So
the assertions basically hold.

Twitter annualized revenue from Q419 is $3bn. Spotify 19Q2 revenue annualized
is $6bn.

~~~
throwawayhhakdl
That doesn’t pass the common sense test.

------
yalogin
The comments yesterday said the same thing. However what I took away from that
article was that AirPods are you really successful and that their revenue
exceeds many unicorns individually. Bluetooth heating tools have been
recognized as a real need for a long time and Apple enters the market really
late and takes over with perfect design and execution creating a new market
segment in the process.

------
ogre_codes
The first thing I noticed about the previous article was how truly terrible
the numbers were on that article. Everything from the assumed ASP of the
iPhone to the total sales were complete nonsense, end easily verifiable as
such. Neil Cybart is pretty biased towards Apple, but his numbers game has
always been spot on and he's completely correct here.

One of the big problems with the modern web is how quickly mis-information get
amplified and how corrections get muffled.

------
elbelcho
Basically, everyone's just estimating. The original chart assumes 60M pairs of
AirPods sold according to Kuo's estimates with an ASP of $200, while the
author of the "correction" tweet is citing his own estimates at 35M pairs sold
at an ASP of $162.

I'm not sure who is more trustworthy, but it generally seems like most people
think $12B is too high and Cybart (the correction tweet guy) is closer to the
actual sales figure

------
sjg007
I don't know how people don't lose these daily and that they don't end up
going through the washing machine.

~~~
mikestew
Speaking personally, I treat them like the expensive items that they are. They
are in my ears, or they are in their case, full stop. Oh, I sometimes think
I'll just stick them in my pocket, I won't forget. "Eh, that's how shit gets
lost; stick 'em in the case."

I also still have the same pair of Oakelys I bought fifteen years ago. But I
understand not everyone is so regimented (my wife, for instance), so I'm sure
more than a few have made a trip through the wash. My wife lost hers for a
while, so I used credit card points to buy a new pair. She then, of course,
promptly found her prior pair and now she has two.

------
fullshark
The basic story from that post still holds if AirPods revenue is actually
between 7.5B - 15B last year.

------
oflannabhra
Neil Cybart is an independent Apple analyst. His models track relatively
closely to reported quarterly earnings. He is also _very_ bullish on AirPods.

------
cmarschner
AirPods are the product I’ve never wanted, at a cost I don’t want to pay. I
have a five year old IPhone. Lightning jack is almost broken, but the
headphone jack works like a charm. It’s the only reason why I haven’t bought a
new Iphone yet. I just don’t want to give in to Apple’s marketing in this
case.

------
pc86
The title needs to be changed

------
dharmon
Sadly this person is just pushing their own blog, and if you get suckered into
following the link, you'll find no sources for _their_ claims either. All you
get is the line: "the math checks out with Apple management’s commentary and
clues provided on the 4Q19 earnings conference call". Um, ok. Supposedly there
is more information behind the paywall for their subscription service, but
we'll never know.

It was well-established in the comments on the previous article that many
numbers were wildly off, so without any sources these tweets bring absolutely
nothing new to the conversation.

------
GhettoMaestro
Glad this was pointed out. That felt weird reading yesterday.

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michalpt
The article just got absolutely destroyed on Twitter:
[https://twitter.com/neilcybart/status/1214867813464236032](https://twitter.com/neilcybart/status/1214867813464236032)

~~~
mikestew
You just regurgitated the link to TFA (or more accurately, The Fine Twitter
Thread).

------
redmaverick
Off topic: Very surprising to know that AirPods cost $250, $150 a piece _and_
that people are willing to buy them.

Also, if they are detached from the iphone, wouldn't you lose them pretty
easily?

~~~
rkangel
I own Samsung Galaxy buds, rather than Airpods but the logic is the same (the
audio quality is worse though).

You don't lose them because they live in a charging case and they go straight
from ear to charging case. You never put them down anywhere else.

The difference with using them is bigger than you would imagine. There's no
untangling of cable, no threading down clothes, no restriction on where you
put your phone (assuming it's vaguely nearby). I can, for instance, put them
in one handed while never taking my eyes off the road.

------
gnome_chomsky
Anyone else get creeped out and realize just deep and tangled our mindsets are
when reading these articles lauding consumer products? The biggest and best
companies are all laser focused on producing as much throw away consumer crap
as they can while we are hurtling towards catastrophic climate destruction.
These write ups lauding the innovative business strategies of convenient,
throw-away luxury items feels like anesthetic. The world's on fire and the
best and brightest have fatalistic attitudes towards doing anything meaningful
and we're just heaping on more tinder.

~~~
krapht
Stopping climate change is mostly a political problem, not a technical one. An
extremely difficult one since it requires collective action from the entire
world. Even when it is a technical problem, it's not clear to me that software
developers have anything productive to add to the research in this area that
isn't already being done (renewable energy R&D, geo-engineering).

PS. The world is not on fire. Most of the 1st world will live through this
with some bumps and scratches along the way, because we have sufficient
resources to engineer our way out of any problems. It's only "catastrophic"
for poor people near the equator. It's not fatalism, it's just being pragmatic
about where the incentives are.

