Professional Headset Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

The Global Professional Headset Market is anticipated to register a CAGR of over 11.84% over the forecast period (2021-2026). The growth of business process outsourcing and call centers due to the evolving business environment and government involvement has increased the demand for the professional headphone market.

Key Highlights

• The growing importance of audio and video conferencing within the teams in the corporations is delivering growth opportunities for microphone vendors. The same has been confirmed with the lockdown extended in the wake of CoVID-19 making these the critical components for carrying business as usual.. Buyers demand better sound quality as the number of meeting rooms per location is on the rise, and the use of the meeting rooms for remote conferencing is increasing.
• The market is becoming more competitive, with various enterprise communications endpoints vendors either reflecting the professional headsets launches as part of their portfolio or enhancing the existing portfolio with new headset models to the market.
• Cisco, in 2018, launched its own line of professional headsets, indicating that it is looking forward to capitalizing on the considerable growth opportunities in this space. Further, a Danish company RTX created a new line of DECT headsets and offers original equipment manufacturers (OEM) the partnering opportunities for design, development, and production processes of its wireless units. As software communications and collaboration services are gaining traction and usage among office workers, increasing number of enterprise communications providers are evaluating OEM relationships to resell professional headset products under their own names and branding.
• While USB-based corded PC headsets are expected to witness the most significant growth within the large office worker segment, wireless headsets that connect to the PC or notebook through a USB device or hub are expected to prevail within the executive and senior management segment. Vendors have improved wireless headset technology. Hence, the wireless headset segment is expected to drive the professional headset sector. Vendors are now offering wireless headsets with sound quality that is comparable to that of wired headsets.
• The advent of artificial intelligence, such as automation and automation in the business process, is reducing the number of individuals working on business process outsourcing. Several banks are shifting their focus towards AI since people often interact with their banks to get necessary information such as checking balances or to perform basic tasks like paying bills. Also, in the banking and financial industry, the attempt to mitigate the need for live call centers and slit excess costs is significantly visible, owing to the introduction of the chatbot.
• For instance, Sberbank’s AI, a passive third party to call center transactions, listens to conversations and applys natural language processing (NLP) techniques to these conversations to train them. The program is expected to learn enough within the next few years to expand its role and suggest responses to the call center operator, and allow for fully human interactions to get supported by the accuracy and speed of AI. Such deployment of AI in the call center application would significantly hamper the growth of the market studied.

Key Market Trends

United Communications to Hold Significant Share

• Voice quality is becoming crucial with the increasing product launches by the enterprises for applications such as softphones, audio, video, and Web conferencing through their company’s network and using multiple enterprise devices such as PCs, notebooks, and mobile phones. The role of office headsets in the UC space will be vital to not only enhance voice quality but also standardize it across multiple UC applications and devices.
• Headset vendors are already introducing a growing portfolio of UC headsets that include higher audio bandwidth, superior noise cancellation, and speech recognition capability
• Call centres are mainly opting for UC and business headsets owing to benefits that they bring to their business processes, such as increased productivity levels of employees and efficient communication with clients.
• UC-enabled headsets support the use of a variety of personal devices such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones. These headsets enable all employees working from home to attend calls, video conferences, and meetings with clients with convenience without external disturbances.
• Moreover, most of the organizations are opting for cost optimization strategies and seek to a reduce the need for office space by adopting the work culture that promotes work from home and BYOD policies. These policies encourage employees to choose devices that eliminate external disturbances for effective communication over calls and improved efficiency while performing office-related tasks.

Asia-Pacific to Hold Major Share

• Several emerging countries, mainly China and India, are focusing on the development of infrastructure to boost several businesses and develop their economic position in the global marketplace. The Indian government is encouraging small & medium enterprises to adopt the latest technologies that help increase output and generate profits.
• The rapidly growing events market in the region owing to the rise in the number of sponsors, enhanced reach among the youth population, and an increase in inclination toward entrepreneurship among youth is driving the adoption of professional headsets.
• The rise in popularity across the continent of the regional live music scene has been remarkable, with every country seeing steady growth not just in the number of events being held, but in the revenue made from them.
• Further, the strong demand for business process outsourcing in the region has majorly driven the demand fro professional headset in the region. Currently, India dominates the business process outsourcing market in the region. India's BPO industry is mature and handles a plethora of primary and secondary (non-core) business tasks. It includes customer call centers, IT system development, IT infrastructure and technical support, among others. This increase in interactions through audio and video conferencing in these tasks increases the demand for a professional headset market.
• Furthermore, the upcoming sports events such as the 2020 Olympic Games in Japan, ICC World T20 in Australia, Paralympic Games in Japan among others in the region would further boost the adoption of the professional headset.

Competitive Landscape

The professional headset market is becoming considerably competitive with multiple vendors expanding their product line to offer a broad portfolio of solutions. Vendors have been rolling out headsets with numerous product improvements, including advanced active noise cancellation, improved connectivity, innovative form factors, and an expanding array of built-in capabilities. In order to capture higher customer mindshare, they are competing on technologies, pricing, and product support.

• March 2019 - Sennheiser launched double-sided MB 360 UC at Enterprise Connect, Florida. It is designed for modern office workers, who need to concentrate and collaborate in a noisy environment such as open offices, coworking spaces or when commuting. The MB 360 UC headset has a talk time of up to 25 hours and is UC optimized, ensuring increased productivity.

Additional Benefits:

• The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
• 3 months of analyst support