This year, truly wireless earbuds have become the most desired form factor for on-the-go listening. Many consumers are interested in improved interoperability between their wireless audio devices and their smartphone, and the wireless speaker ecosystem continues to go through a period of rapid change fuelled by the adoption of cloud-based voice assistants.
To further understand audio trends in the truly wireless age, we conducted our fifth annual survey of smartphone users from the U.S., U.K., China, Japan, and Germany. It provides a broad global view of how consumers are connecting and communicating, and what they’re looking for in their next audio device purchases.
Here are just a few of our findings:
Sound quality is still #1
Now a five-year trend, sound quality is the single most important purchase driver in consumer audio, with 77% of respondents interested in high-resolution sound quality.
Demand for longer battery life is near-universal
Our findings show 83% of audio consumers surveyed are interested in extended battery life.
Video and gaming audio go wireless
Video media consumption is now the second most popular use case for wireless headphones and third most-popular for earbuds. Almost half of all consumers surveyed reported using wireless audio products while gaming.
Wireless audio user experience matters
Our data shows that audio glitching and dropouts are barriers for nearly a quarter of wireless headphone shoppers surveyed.