The rebuilding and transformation of the audio category is happening, the Premium Audio Company makers of Klipsch products has been sold, McIntosh the high end audio Company has been acquired by Bose and the maker of brands such as Bowers & Wilkins, Marantz and Denon is in limbo as the Company that acquired them gets closer to choosing a buyer for the iconic brands.
Currently the industry is being fuelled by a digital replatforming and explosive growth in streaming.
Chinese brands such as WiiM have cracked the miniaturization of audio products and are booming with their amplifiers, streamers selling well globally including Australia.
What is interesting is that Bose has been linked with several Companies as being partners into the development of audio products for Loewe, Skullcandy with speculation that the Company could even launch a range of McIntosh branded consumer products.
Sonos the pioneer and leader in the networked audio market is now in trouble for the simple reason that their entire early strategy was based on a proprietary system and as the networked audio market moved to Wi Fi and Bluetooth streaming Sonos struggled.
Then came their disastrous attempt to develop an app an effort that has resulted in a seriously damaged business.
In Australia the premium audio category is worth around $350 to $400M but the only problem is that there are too many premium and affordable speaker brands especially as retailers of premium sound are not making headway selling to the younger audience who still believe that Sonos is premium sound.
As the audio industry enters its next phase of growth, they are going to simultaneously have to navigate a multifaceted relationship with AI while developing a next generation of products designed for a streaming era where AI plays a key role in audio output.
After Sonos basically invented networked audio, it took around three years before premium audio brands finally accepted that networked audio was here to stay before they developed their own network offering, now we are at another crossroads with several brands struggling to survive in a market choked by competition.
Some brands such as French audio brand Devialet, simply try another distributor instead of addressing the marketing issues associated with their brand such as investing in marketing in an effort to tell consumers about their brand instead of relying on a retailer to be the sole marketer.
Cash flow in the specialist channel is currently an issue while mass retailers are seeing growth across multiple audio categories especially in the open ear and bone conduction category.
Part of this surge is due to people not being happy with in ear or have a history of losing buds.
As for the future it could be possible in the future to listen to a favourite song without disturbing the people around you, even without wearing headphones.
In a new advancement audio engineers at Penn State College of Engineering have precisely narrowed where sound is perceived by creating localized pockets of sound zones, called audible enclaves.
In an enclave, a listener can hear sound, while others standing nearby cannot, even if the people are in an enclosed space, like a vehicle, or standing directly in front of the audio source.
In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers explained how emitting two nonlinear ultrasonic beams create audible enclaves, where sound can only be perceived at the precise intersection point of two ultrasonic beams.
“We use two ultrasound transducers paired with an acoustic meta surface, which emit self-bending beams that intersect at a certain point,” said corresponding author Jing.
“The person standing at that point can hear sound, while anyone standing nearby would not. This creates a privacy barrier between people for private listening.”
Does this mean the end of headphones, let’s see.
