Home speakers, portable speakers and multiroom audio top the consumer charts: New Futuresource research

The consumer love affair with music and audio in the home shows no signs of cooling off. With audio hardware capturing the attention of shoppers, Futuresource Consulting’s latest round of international research points to a future of multiroom audio and a demand for even longer battery life from portable speaker owners. 

Home and portable speakers jostling for pole position

“Music continues to captivate audiences,” says Guy Hammett, Senior Market Analyst, Futuresource Consulting, “and that’s being reflected in the hardware that consumers are buying for their homes. In this year’s survey, we found home speakers, powered by the mains, topped the ownership charts. At 38% penetration, they were just four percentage points ahead of portable speakers. And smart displays and soundbars weren’t far behind.” 

Multiroom audio making waves

“Multiroom audio remains a popular feature among home speaker owners, with nearly two-in-three having their home speakers set up in this way. In addition, 33% of respondents who plan to buy a home speaker in the next 12 months told us they’d purchase at least two of them. This reinforces the move to multiroom. And there’s a powerplay opportunity here for vendors, with 83% of multiroom users outside of China opting for a system with speakers all from the same brand.” 

Battery life dividing audiences

The study also shows that battery life is still a key concern for current portable speaker owners. Despite the power improvements made in recent years, more than 80% of owners stated that their device’s battery capabilities had depleted. However, there’s a significant difference in requirements between owners of these devices and intended purchasers. For people intending to buy, extended battery life ranked at the bottom of important features for portable speakers. 

For smart device owners, listening to music remains the most popular use case. Futuresource notes that there are few differences overall to previous surveys, and the vast majority of popular use cases are still lacking in complexity.  

However, respondents did report a significant variation in how they interacted with their smart devices, depending on the use case. As an example, simple requests such as weather updates were carried out primarily with voice commands, whereas more complex interactions were less likely to rely on voice. 

Delving into regional differences

Focusing on regional variations, the study found that Japanese consumers significantly under-indexed for home audio product ownership. Futuresource believes this due to a combination of the popularity of headphones in the country, and cultural factors that mean shared audio experiences are less popular. Conversely, China significantly over-indexed for wireless speakers, although it lagged behind USA, UK and Germany for soundbars. 

Soundbar opportunities persist

“This latest round of research shows that soundbars are now a well-established device for many consumers,” says Hammett. “This year we found that 66% of soundbar-owning respondents have moved beyond the basic soundbar-only set up.  

“Those who have added a subwoofer to their system generally bought it at the same time as their soundbar. The majority of intended soundbar purchasers also told us they would buy an external subwoofer separately if their next soundbar didn’t come with one. Ownership of wireless rear speakers was lower, with the majority of soundbar owners without one satisfied with the sound from their current set up. 

“However, among consumers who primarily use built-in TV speakers for watching TV and movies, almost 50% believe that their built-in TV speakers are of a good enough quality. This points towards a requirement for continued education, and the need for consumers to experience these products first-hand to grow soundbar penetration.” 

The new series of Audio Tech Lifestyles reports from Futuresource Consulting include detailed consumer survey responses about ownership and usage of wireless speakers, smart speakers, soundbars, Hi-Fi systems and separates, and headphones across the USA, UK, Germany, Japan and China, conducted with more than 10,000 consumers. For further information or to make a purchase, please contact Luke at luke.brodin@futuresource-hq.com. 

About the author

Guy Hammett

Guy Hammett is a Senior Market Analyst in the Consumer Electronics team at Futuresource Consulting. Guy joined Futuresource in 2016 and has worked in a variety of different Consumer Electronics areas, both continuous tracking services and one-off custom projects, and has specialised in audio research for the last four years.

He currently heads up Futuresource Consulting’s quarterly Home Audio tracking reports and twice yearly market reports forecasting out to 2024 and regularly represents Futuresource at trade conferences across the globe.