Comment by happyopossum
10 hours ago
Setting aside debates about which is “better”, this article appears to be based on crap. The link to the supporting analysis uses the words “through the roof”, but here’s what it says:
“ wired headphones rebounded in 2025, growing 3% (about $15M).”
So now a 3% growth in sales is “exploding” and “through the roof”? No, I don’t think so…
This is the BBC. I've been reading their site every day for many years now. They're mostly good, but at times they have a way of steering their audience towards an agenda through bunk articles like this. It was especially evident with the remote work hit-pieces they published regularly during the RTO movement a couple of years ago. It was clear someone was pulling strings at the BBC to generate negative headlines about remote work, but when you dug into their sources, you'd see data to suggest the complete opposite.
I'm not sure what the agenda would be in this case and maybe there is no agenda, but it's something to be aware of. It could be simply one of their contributors has a bone to pick with manufacturers over the lack of reliability in Bluetooth audio technology.
> They're mostly good, but at times they have a way of steering their audience towards an agenda through bunk articles like this.
Real-time Gell-Mann amnesia.
And a 30% increase in sales across a cherrypicked 6wk time window. This is one of those articles that's more wishful thinking than real news, even though I have the same wish.
I wouldn't choose those words, but a 3% increase of something that's been steadily in decline is significant enough to warrant hyperbole of some kind.