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BLUETOOTH is now ubiquitous, claims SAR Insight & Consulting, with 80 million Bluetooth-enabled speakers to ship in 2015.
This is up from the 65 million Bluetooth enabled home audio devices shipped in 2014, with the numbers due to double by 2020.
Bluetooth continues to be the most widely used wireless technology for mobile device audio, and was used in more than 95 percent of wireless headphones and mobile speakers in 2014. Other wireless technologies, including Wi-Fi and NFC, are also being widely adopted by speaker OEMs.
The trend towards wireless audio is due to consumer behaviour in streaming music from portable devices such as smartphones, which, being connected to the Internet, allow access to online music libraries such as Spotify.
With Bluetooth found in most smartphones, and simplified pairing mechanisms, consumers have flocked to Bluetooth as the audio streaming technology of choice for peer to peer connections.
Wi-Fi implementation in home audio devices has also increased rapidly, especially for use in multi-room devices. Wi-Fi is also widely used in room speakers (Airplay, DNLA) and is increasingly used in sound bars and mobile speakers. More than 130 million Wi-Fi enabled home audio devices are expected to ship between 2010 and 2020.
NFC use has grown rapidly since 2012. It is used alongside Bluetooth in many cases to enable simplified pairing between devices. Proprietary RF also continues to find niche uses; it is used in high end wireless headphones and has been extensively used in sound bars as the wireless technology to stream to wireless subwoofers.