While Samsung has previously poked fun at Apple users for not having a headphone jack, a new report from ET News claims that the Korean tech giant is going to follow the lead of Apple and Google and drop the headphone jack in 2019.
Citing supply chain sources, ET News says that Samsung is considering removing the mini jack from the Galaxy S11 and perhaps even the Note 10, replacing it with a single USB-C connector.
You can blame Apple, which made this possible. Almost every phone manufacturer — from Huawei to Google to the latest to drop the minijack shoe, OnePlus — seems to have followed the Cupertino company’s lead after it demonstrated that most people don’t give a damn about the lack of a minijack, preferring to rely on wireless or proprietary earbuds.
Indeed, the raging success of the jack-less iPhone and the AirPods have prompted a race in the industry, with AirPod-like headphones coming from all top audio manufacturers in the world.
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According to ET News, the ever increasing popularity of wireless headphone solutions is precisely one of the main reasons why Samsung may be dropping the jack:
“According to market researcher Strategy Analytics (SA), the global wireless earphone market is expected to reach 73.9 million units in 2019 and 100 million units in 2022,” reads ET News’ report. “It is 42% growth from 51.9 million last year to two years.”
As the wireless headphone market explodes, Samsung is probably seeing an opportunity to promote its own earbuds.
The other reason cited by ET News is design: Samsung is on a race to offer a thinner and lighter phone, with radical design changes on the pipeline. The elimination of an extra port will help them towards that goal.
And while there are many audiophiles who say they will never buy a phone without a headphone jack, the fact is that the industry is clearly going wireless in every respect. It’s not crazy to think that, in a matter of a few years, we will also see the USB-C port disappearing from every phone in existence. Better get used to it, because there’s nowhere to run from here, baby.
