Everyone is constantly on the lookout for discounts like the one we told you about yesterday, regarding Amazon’s price cut yet again on Apple’s massively successful AirPods Pro and AirPods 2. All of Apple’s AirPods models got deeper discounts at Amazon during Black Friday and Cyber Monday than at any other retailer — and consequently sold out in a flash. As of the time of this writing, the AirPods Pro are still listed as “temporarily sold out” on Amazon, but you can still grab them for the Black Friday price of $234.98 (cheaper than pretty much everywhere else) and Amazon will ship them to you when they can.
This is the latest evidence of how AirPods have been selling like hotcakes for Apple — so much so that the product is about to notch a major milestone. According to a new analyst report today, the wireless earbuds are about to surpass peak sales of the iPod, which is a major achievement when you stop and think about how closely associated with the Apple brand the iPod once was.
In the report Asymco published today, it delves into a little bit of Apple history and talks about how the iPod once completely changed everyone’s expectations for Apple. That the product was, in fact, the reason Apple dropped the “Computer” from its name and set the stage for the iPhone and everything else to come. And yet here we are, with this estimate forecasting that AirPods are about to beat the $4 billion in quarterly revenue that Apple saw in 2007 during the peak of iPod sales. “For the AirPods to overtake the iPod highlights just what a phenomenal category Wearables has become,” the note reads. “In combination with Home and other accessories, the category is going to decidedly overtake the Mac, having already passed the iPad.”
Of course, there’s a lot of guesswork fueling the estimates in this report, since Apple doesn’t break out the revenue of specific products in its Wearables and Home category. All analysts can do, the report notes, is subtract out a guess for Apple Watch revenue and then guess again at how much of the remaining portion of the category’s revenue is likely attributable to AirPods. Speaking of Apple Watch, as a reminder — it hit this same $4 billion quarterly revenue number, and thus surpassed peak iPod, back in the fourth quarter of 2018.
“And so it goes, something dismissed as inconsequential — ‘does not move the needle’ — ends up becoming a massive force of change,” the report concludes. “The iPod was that, the original Apple II, the Mac and yes, also the iPhone. It’s the asymmetry of humility that this happens over and over again.”
“And so it goes, something dismissed as inconsequential — ‘does not move the needle’ — ends up becoming a massive force of change,” the report concludes. “The iPod was that, the original Apple II, the Mac and yes, also the iPhone. It’s the asymmetry of humility that this happens over and over again.”
