Apple shipped 16.8 million pairs of wireless earbuds in the second quarter of 2026, more than any other company in the world. AirPods held the top spot even as the overall market for true wireless earbuds shrank for the first time in three years.
The numbers come from a new report by Omdia, which tracks global shipments of true wireless stereo, or TWS, devices across every major vendor. Global TWS shipments fell 0.7 percent year over year to 82.1 million units, the first annual decline since the second quarter of 2023.
Apple Grows While the Broader Earbuds Market Shrinks
Mainland China, the world’s largest TWS market, drove most of the decline. Shipments there fell 9.5 percent as government stimulus for consumer electronics faded and some replacement demand got pulled forward into 2025. The US and India also saw shipments decline, and growth in emerging markets only partly made up the difference.
Apple moved the opposite direction, airPods shipments grew 1.2 percent year over year, pushing Apple’s share of the global TWS market up to 20.5 percent from 20.1 percent a year earlier. Here is how the top vendors compared in the second quarter:
- Apple: 16.8 million units, 20.5 percent share, up 1.2 percent year over year
- Xiaomi: 8.6 million units, 10.4 percent share, down 3.1 percent
- Samsung: 5.5 million units, 6.7 percent share, down 2.9 percent
- Huawei: 5.1 million units, 6.2 percent share, down 10.6 percent
- OPPO: 4.1 million units, 5.0 percent share, up 14.9 percent
Apple was the only vendor in the top five, besides OPPO, to post growth at all. Its AirPods 5 lineup keeps pulling in buyers even as rivals like Xiaomi, Samsung, and Huawei all lost ground.
A New Category of Open-Ear Earbuds Is Growing Fast, Just Not for Apple
Omdia’s data points to a second story hiding inside the flat overall numbers. Open wireless stereo, or OWS, devices, clip-on and ear-hook earbuds that leave the ear canal open rather than sealing it, grew 12 percent to 11.1 million units. That pushed OWS to 13.5 percent of the total TWS market, up from 12.0 percent a year earlier.
Shokz leads that category by a wide margin, more than doubling its shipments year over year. Here is how the top OWS vendors stacked up:
- Shokz: 1.1 million units, 10.3 percent share, up 107.9 percent year over year
- Sanag: 0.8 million units, 7.6 percent share, up 2.4 percent
- Huawei: 0.8 million units, 7.0 percent share, down 4.1 percent
- Baseus: 0.7 million units, 6.6 percent share, up 29.9 percent
- Edifier: 0.6 million units, 5.4 percent share, up 0.2 percent
Clip-on designs made up 61 percent of all OWS shipments in the quarter, with ear-hook models covering the rest. The entry-level price segment under $50 grew 323 percent year over year, led by brands like Sanag, Baseus, and QCY. Apple does not appear in Omdia’s OWS vendor breakdown at all. Omdia forecasts annual OWS shipments will nearly double, from 43.9 million units in 2026 to 90.5 million units by 2030, making up close to one in five TWS shipments worldwide by then.
Our Take
Apple’s position looks strong on paper, and the growth in a market that shrank for the first time in three years backs that up. The part worth watching is the category Apple is sitting out. Open-ear designs are growing faster than anything else in this market, and Shokz more than doubling its shipments in a single year is not a small brand finding a niche, it is a real shift in what some buyers want from earbuds. Apple has spent years building AirPods around a sealed, in-ear design with active noise cancellation as the main selling point. If open-ear keeps growing at this pace, that design philosophy will eventually need a second act.
