But Logitech, a maker of mice and other peripherals that also used to have its audio products featured on Apple’s site, isn’t concerned.
Revenue from speakers and headphones only make up about 12.5% of Logitech’s total sales. And sales of mobile speakers actually fell 24% from a year ago in the most recent quarter.
Logitech CEO Bracken Darrell said in an interview with CNN Business that he’s not concerned about Apple’s internal speaker and headset push (Apple also owns Beats).
“We already decided to redeploy some of our investments out of the speaker category. It’s no longer a big priority at all,” Darrell said.
“We would be crazy to compete with Apple. We’re just a little mouse company and we want to help make their customer experience better. We feel the same way about Google and other big tech competitors,” he added.
Video conferencing and esports lifting sales
Revenue from gaming — things like keyboards, joysticks, steering wheels and other controllers — soared 85% in its most recent quarter while video collaboration sales more than doubled. These two product lines are Logitech’s biggest, accounting for 42.5% of total sales.
“Video conferencing is a long-term trend. We expect all conference calls to eventually be done by video and the pandemic is accelerating that,” Darrell said.
But gaming is also boosting Logitech’s fortunes.
“There is no end in sight to the boom in gaming. There is no reason why esports won’t keep growing and eventually become even bigger than traditional sports,” Darrell said.
And with 5G technology being rolled out more aggressively across the US, Darrell said that he expects demand for gaming products to keep growing rapidly
“It’s still so early in the deployment of 5G that it’s not a big factor for us yet,” Darrell said. “But 5G will eventually make gaming easier and able to be played at a completely different speed.”