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                    The Stratospheric Growth of the AirPods

   Josh Centers

   [1]Wired UK has published a look at the explosive growth of Apple's
   AirPods. Despite little promotion from Apple, the AirPods have
   overtaken AMD, Shopify, Snap, Spotify, and Twitter in revenue. In 2018,
   they earned an estimated $3.3 billion in revenue. In 2019, AirPods
   revenue shot by 121 percent for an estimated total of $7.3 billion. 'It
   was almost like wildfire how quickly it spread,' said Apple Vice
   President of Product Marketing Greg Joswiak.

   Apart from some recent issues with unavoidable firmware updates (see
   '[2]AirPods Pro Firmware Problems,' 4 May 2020), the only notable
   concern about the AirPods revolves around their essentially disposable
   nature'their lithium-ion batteries are sealed in and have a limited
   lifespan. Apple offers a recycling program, but realistically there are
   going to be a lot of AirPods in landfills. We can hope that Apple's
   engineers will put in the necessary effort to create AirPods with
   replaceable batteries, but despite Apple's claims about
   environmentalism, that seems unlikely to happen.

   [3]Read original article

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   1. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/apple-airpods-success
   2. https://tidbits.com/2020/05/04/airpods-pro-firmware-problems/
   3. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/apple-airpods-success

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