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The "easy money" boom in the headphone market officially ends in 2026. Data source: RUNTO · Industry Deep Insight According to the latest report released by RUNTO, the total sales of headphones and he...
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The "easy money" boom in the headphone market officially ends in 2026.
Data source: RUNTO · Industry Deep Insight
According to the latest report released by RUNTO, the total sales of headphones and headsets in China across all channels in 2025 was 203 million units, a year-on-year decline of 6.9%. This marks the first time since the TWS boom in 2019 that the Chinese market has experienced a sales decline.
Strangely enough, although the overall sales of the headphone market have shrunk, people's "desire to spend" has not decreased, and in fact, they are spending more aggressively——statistics show that: the average market price has increased by 13.3% against the trend, reaching a direct 223 yuan.
In the view of LeiKeji, this market situation of declining sales but rising average selling price is actually a good thing for the headphone market and some headphone brands. After all, it means that those relying on "just making a sound" to survive, the so-called "bad money" low-cost white-label brands, have finally exited the historical stage.
The era of "cheap substitutes" has come to an end
Looking back at 2019 to 2024, the growth logic of the headphone market can be summed up in two words: "cheap substitutes". For example, using a few dozen yuan TWS headphones to replace wired headphones, or using a few hundred yuan domestic noise-canceling headphones to replace high-end noise-canceling models from Sony or Bose; but by 2026, this logic no longer works.
RUNTO's data shows that the online market experienced a sharp drop of 13.8% in Q4 2025. The reason is not complicated: the survival space for those focusing on the online market and so-called "cheap substitutes" has long been compressed to the limit.
