As buyers accept a premium for good audio, spotlight remains on headphones

Realignments aren’t easy, but they’ve been done before. Televisions made a strong comeback, as smart TVs through the best part of this past decade when external media players and gaming consoles contended for streaming dominance. Premium headphones, similarly under threat from true wireless earbuds (or TWS), are fighting back with features as key differentiators.
British tech company Dyson, and American audio giants Sonos are looking to break into a premium headphones market that’s otherwise dominated by Sony, Bose, and Sennheiser. Apple’s updated AirPods Max, which go on sale now, adds another layer of intrigue. Sony doesn’t have a premium new headphone to join its portfolio but has announced an additional colour, Smoky Pink, for its 1000X series ahead of the festive season sales.
This week, Dyson, a brand well known for high-tech air purifiers, home cleaning devices, and hair care products, launched OnTrac headphones. They’re priced at ₹44,900. These imbibe learnings from the first-generation cans (called Dyson Zone; with a built-in air purification visor that made wearers look like Bane from The Dark Knight). Gone is that visor, and the focus is on pure audio.
“I recognise that a lot of headphones look the same. They’re all black, plastic,” Jake Dyson, chief engineer at Dyson, told HT. No surprise then, the company has gone for four dual-tone colourways as the default pick, along with seven colours each for replaceable ear cushions and outer caps—these will cost around ₹4,900 per colour, for a pair of cushions or caps. That level of customisation is still quite rare with headphones.
Brands established and new to the space are fighting for a slice of the pie that research firm Statista estimates will be to the tune of $0.8 billion by the end of this year, and expected to grow annually at 2.4% through until 2029. Global Market Insights, a research firm, predicts the worldwide headphones and earphones market will be worth $49 billion by 2024 end, up from $34.7 billion now.
A few days earlier, Sonos, well known for connected multi-room speakers and soundbars, unveiled their first headphones called Ace. They pitch closer integration within an existing Sonos speaker network in your home, alongside head-tracking spatial audio with Dolby Atmos format support. The Sonos Ace is priced at ₹39,999 in India.
“Fans have asked us for years to bring the Sonos experience to headphones, and we knew our first foray into the category needed to champion the type of innovation and sound experience Sonos has become synonymous with,” said CEO Patrick Spence in a statement.
Audio enthusiasts prefer premium headphones, because of larger and more versatile audio drivers. The result is potentially better sound. Dyson OnTrack and Sonos Ace have 40-millimeter audio drivers, the Sony WH-1000XM5 holds 30mm drivers. In comparison, premium true wireless earbuds often have around 12mm drivers, with some such as the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 4 earbuds going even smaller, at 7mm.
For a detailed soundstage, larger is usually better. Most brands also stake claim to category-defining noise cancellation performance, though preferences are subjective.
In an Indian context, Consuma Technologies’ latest research indicates the premium headphones corner as much as 15% of the overall headphones market. “As India’s economy grows, disposable income is increasing, allowing consumers to spend more on discretionary items. This has fuelled the demand for higher-priced, premium headphones,” the report said.
Sony currently holds 10% of India’s headphone sales share, while Bose has cornered 8%.
The Japanese tech company’s WH-1000XM5 headphones compete with Sennheiser Momentum 4 and Bose QuietComfort Ultra—all priced between ₹25,000 to ₹35,000. The Smoky Pink WH-1000XM5 headphones also retain the same price tag as the other colour options, which is ₹31,990.
Apple’s 16% share is largely inclusive of the AirPods wireless earbuds, with any impact of the updated AirPods Max, expected to crystallise in coming quarters. The changes include a USB-C charging port, reconfigured colours, and an iOS 18-induced smarter version of Siri assistant incoming.
Features, often unique ones, help find traction as discerning buyers want the best value for their buck. Tuned audio drivers, tweaks to noise cancellation better, and customisation accessories, becoming critical. Sony, for instance, bets on Edge-AI processing to upscale compressed digital music files, to sound better.
Dyson is adding a health-tracking element that uses the eight microphones integrated into the OnTrac, to detect exposure to in-ear and external sounds. That functionality is integrated into the companion app. “We have a lot of engineers and scientists looking at how we can develop further needs for protecting our ears, but also understanding our ears to enhance sound,” said Jake Dyson.
Apple perhaps missed a trick by not adding the H2 audio processing chip to the AirPods Max. This chip uses newer computational algorithms and has since made its way into AirPods Pro 2 and the new AirPods 4 earbuds. The Max headphones still use an older H1 chip, which too is capable of directional spatial audio and active noise cancellation.
Numbers by research firm Gfk indicate that through 2023, wireless headphones outperformed their category average. Their latest data says headphones, driven more by a fashion trend, clocked at 29% revenue growth through 2023, compared with the year prior.
“Innovation in audio headphones allows for tailored choices based on usage scenarios such as sports or office,” said the report. In fact, within the broader audio-vision category, portable audio on the back of headphone sales bucked a trend that saw home audio and cinema audio categories shrink.