Apple is already winning the wireless headphones market with AirPods

Despite delays, Apple’s AirPods had a great holiday season according to a new report on wireless headphone online spending over the past several weeks.

The report from Slice Intelligence–which collects its data from hundreds of millions of anonymized e-receipts–found that the $159 AirPods have accounted for more than a quarter of all online wireless headphones revenue since pre-orders for the product launched on December 13.

The report also finds that the AirPods pre-order launch was the biggest day for online headphone sales of the year, outpacing sales on Cyber Monday and Black Friday. A major part of this is no doubt related to the fact that the headphones had a pretty limited launch in retail stores due to low supply caused by manufacturing delays.

Apple already had a major presence in the wireless headphone market previous to the AirPods launch thanks to various wireless models of the company’s Beats headphones. The Slice data shows that in 2015 and 2016, around 24 percent of wireless headphones sold online were Beats-branded.

Headphones are by and large continuing to gain bluetooth connectivity, Slice claims that nearly 75% of headphones purchases bought online this holiday season were of the wireless variety.

Of the many takeaways emerging from CES this year on the consumer hardware front, one of the clearest was that wireless earbuds are in a clear period of growth moving into next year. As more phone manufacturers plot ditching the headphone jack, it seems to be an inevitable direction for the industry to head. The AirPods are some of the most polished wireless earbud solution currently available and are actually a bit cheaper than most options, though they’re still quite expensive.

There really haven’t been any product entrants in the wireless earbud space from legacy audio companies to date, so whether this market position will sustain itself for Apple depends on them innovating the product category itself as they seek to reinvent what all a headphone can really do.

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Apple Software Bug Lets Hackers Crash iPhones, Researchers Say

Apple Inc.’s iOS operating system contains a bug that lets attackers crash iPhones and iPads within range of a wireless hotspot, security company Skycure Ltd. said.

The devices’ applications and even the entire base software shut down when served with manipulated SSL encryption certificates, Skycure Chief Executive Officer Adi Sharabani said in a phone interview. If hackers manage to force devices within range onto their own wireless network, they can effectively create a “no iOS zone,” according to Tel Aviv, Israel-based Skycure.

“When their programs crash, people tend to put this off as a quality issue,” Sharabani said. “But it can be a serious vulnerability.”

With Apple keeping tight control over its operating system’s code and the applications that may run on it, attackers targeting mobile devices have concentrated on Google Inc.’s Android platform, which gives them more leeway for manipulation. The SSL bug shows that attackers occasionally get the opportunity to damage Apple customers as well.

An Apple representative in London declined to comment. Skycure said it isn’t aware of anyone having exploited the security loophole.

The latest iOS version, the 8.3 released this month, fixed some of the vulnerabilities, while others could still be reproduced, Sharabani said. He declined to provide details so as to not give hackers instructions.

Reboot Cycles

Skycure, founded in 2012 by Sharabani and Chief Technology Officer Yair Amit, specializes in software that protects mobile devices from attacks via the airwaves. The company, which received $8 million last month from investors including Shasta Ventures, discovered in 2013 how hackers can force mobile users onto malicious wireless networks by using privileges normally reserved for mobile carriers.

Skycure researchers found the iOS bug while experimenting with various ways to connect devices to a network. When they brought in a new router and changed the wireless configuration, programs on devices running Apple software began crashing.

Hackers controlling the network that the device is on can also control the certificates that are normally being used to securely transfer data, and use them for a so-called “denial of service” attack. Since SSL encryption is used by iOS and almost all applications available in the app store, the vulnerability concerns a wide range of users.

In the worst case, the devices can be forced into reboot cycles that can only be broken if the customer moves out of range of the malicious network, Sharabani said. Users should make sure to upgrade their operating system soon, and be wary of using public local wireless networks, Skycure said.

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