As Andresson Horowitz is predicting one of the latest trends in consumer tech is the explosion of audio consumption. Monthly active podcast listeners and weekly active podcast listeners are on the rise. There are several factors driving this trend :
- Wireless earbuds allow us to listen to audio on the go
- Smart speakers at home make audio consumption available and accessible round the clock
- Connected cars and internet make sure audio is available when we are driving
There are various ways that this trend is playing out in publicly traded companies. Let us take 3 examples from big tech
- Hardware : Apple is already leading with exploding growth in the wearables division. One of the prime drivers of this growth is wireless earbuds. You can read more here : Wearables made $10 billion in Q4, 2019 alone. Apple also sells Apple speakers but they are not as popular as the earbuds.
- Google and Amazon are also great ways to play this trend. Global smart speaker sales hit a record high last year with shipments of 146.9 million units, up 70% over 2018. Nearly 70% of owners of smart speaker devices in the US own Amazon Echo devices.
Monetization
At this point hardware sales is the biggest stream of monetization in this market as companies vie to gain marketshare.
There are two ways this trend could be monetized.
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