what size is the overall market for portable headphone amps

[Whirlio]

I'm just wondering how big the worldwide market for portable headphone amps is. In october I bought my first - a Tomahawk, and it's serial # 697. With reading the various hifi websites, I'd guess that the Tomahawk has at least 30-40% of the market, or it did until the Pico / Predator came out. I live in London and have never seen anyone else with a portable amp, despite the fact that millions of commuters use portable audio. I've actually seen more Ultimate Ears 10-pros (1) than headphone amps! Of course this is hardly empirical; I've never met anyone else with Etymotic phones and I know they are relatively popular.

By that very rough estimate, there would be 2000 - 3000 portable headphone amps out there. Doing a check on ebay shows a few unbranded and mostly cheap options, but not loads of recognised maket leaders. (I know about the H-F sale forum too).

It gets a bit complicated when I think about all those who have multiple portable amps. Maybe it's just a few vocal posters but it seems like perhaps 10% of these people have more than one.

So let's say there are 2000 people buying portable headphone amps, and most of them have 1 at a time. Almost everyone has to buy direct from the manufacturers because it's not worth a shop's time to stock them (I only know 1 shop in the UK that has them for instance).

My question is - why is the market so saturated then? Some of the more technical people than me can lay out the probable r&d and production costs, but surely most of these devices need to sell in runs of over 100 to make them profitable or worthwhile to the creators. The 'blockbuster' Tomahawk with it's perhaps 750 sales generates 750 * $295 = $221,250.00 which is surely a great profit for a device that probably costs $100 of Ray's time and all costs. (nearly $150k profit there).

If he'd only sold 100, that'd be $29500 - 10000 = $19500 profit which is fine for a product he's probably spent 18 months creating and selling, but it's hardly a ticket for the gravy train.

So anyway there are 750 Tomahawks out there, and Ray's done well. What about the other 25 or so manufacturers? They have live off the rest of the pie - perhaps 1500 to 2500 sales. I suspect they are not spread out evenly - Xin, Pico, Predator, Headroom and maybe Qables products are imho the other major players, off the top of my head. They generate sales by signing up to forums sites like this one, and by word of mouth by other forum users and the very occasional audio review site.

My estimate of the market is this - there is enough for 1-2 manufacturers to make very good money, then maybe another 5 to make good money, but everyone else will either lose money or treat it as a second income or perhaps break-even hobby. Do you guys agree? I think I'm seeing why people here warn me against using my portable rig as my main one - the market just isn't mature enough to go really high end. By the time I get a Pico to replace my $350 Tomahawk (including postage), that will hopefully work well with my ER4P + S cable ($300 again) and ALOAudio cable (heh) I could actually have got the UE-11 Pros which I imagine would blow all my equipment out the water. Bah!

[Whirlio]

I should have pointed out that I am in no way an expert on the techonolgy or market of portable audio, and all figures and musings are fairly speculative. I apologise to Ray if my figures are wildly off, but I hope my point came across regardless.

[grawk]

I'd say you're underestimating the size of the headphone amplifier market by a huge amount. And there is no chance in hell that the tomahawk has 30-40% of the market.

That said, I'm sure Ray does VERY well financially, given the estimates of his production costs vs his retail cost, and the number of people that do buy his products.

[aardvark baguette]

This big.

[hYdrociTy]

3300? Kidding?

If you check the electric-avenues website and look at just pa2v2 sales alone, they account for almost double your total figure.

I count more than five ebay cmoy sellers rake up more than 500 sales each, some over a grand in quantity. Example.

Many people have multiple amps at once, and from the number of distinctive rigs in the POST YOUR PROTOBLE RIG XXXXVI threads, I'd say there would be at least quadruple your figure in quantity.

At say 700 tomahawks out in the market, It would still rank in the bottom quarter at best.

As far as profit is concerned though ....

[Whirlio]

Ah yeah I deliberately ignored the sub $100 amps on ebay but I probably shouldn't have.

I still struggle to see the numbers approaching or overtaking 10,000 owners or even devices in the wild. Although those figures would match up with the current market of maybe 5-10 successful manufacturers and another dozen or more who find it worth the time and effort to create these things.

I got stopped with the Tomahawk through Innsbruck airport a couple of days ago and they'd never seen anything like it before... I tried to explain that it made the iPod sound nicer and they just got a bit confused

[postjack]

7 or 8, maybe?

9 if you count the one that just got sold on HF.

[HiWire]

The reason is partly because of Headroom's successful marketing campaigns... people read their marketing copy in Stereophile and the other magazines, do some research, then go and buy cheaper or other amps. Unfortunately, a lot of people are riding on the backs of more established makers like Tyll, Ray, and Jan Meier. This is not unknown to Tyll, either.

It's fairly easy to make a headphone amp - a number of designs are open-source and the manufacture is not particularly complex using normal electronic parts and standard enclosures like Hammond cases. As the market matures and volumes increase, you'll see more standardized designs and lower prices... witness the popularity of the Chinese products, for example. However, I think the headphone manufacturers have already responded by designing headphones with lower impedances that are suitable for amplification out of stock iPods and other portable media players.

[laxx]

Ah yeah I deliberately ignored the sub $100 amps on ebay but I probably shouldn't have.

I still struggle to see the numbers approaching or overtaking 10,000 owners or even devices in the wild. Although those figures would match up with the current market of maybe 5-10 successful manufacturers and another dozen or more who find it worth the time and effort to create these things.

I got stopped with the Tomahawk through Innsbruck airport a couple of days ago and they'd never seen anything like it before... I tried to explain that it made the iPod sound nicer and they just got a bit confused

Next time you're at an airport and they stop you, tell them it's because you're hard of hearing and you need the amplifier to boost the volume for you. It's much easier for them to understand that opposed to telling them it sounds better. To the general public, an amplifier is used for more volume, not for better quality.

[Fungi]

I'd suspect the market in China is far bigger than we know.

They're kind of gaining popularity in Japan too; with bloggers like Sasaki ordering Picos and Headsixes, more people are becoming aware of these things. The whole "worldwide shipping" thing isn't there just to look fancy

[Dusty Chalk]

And say it in a loud voice.

"I used to drive a tank!"

[laxx]

I thought China's headphone market is the size of the rest of the world combined, lol. Isn't erji.net bigger than head-fi?