A company selling just AirPods could be worth $175 billion in 2020

Air Pods Pro on stage (Image credit: Rene Ritchie / iMore)

What you need to know

If Apple span AirPods off the company could be worth around $175 billion next year.
That would make it the 32nd largest company in the United States.
The number is based on predicted sales.

If Apple was to spin its AirPods business out that company could be worth as much as $175 billion by 2020. That's according to figures put together by Midas Kwant (via Apple Insider).

To get this number Kwant predicts that Apple will sell 100 million AirPods units next year at an average selling price of $200. That number itself comes from Apple's initial 2016 showing of 16 million AirPods. That then grew to 35 million the following year. By extrapolating those numbers Kwant believes that Apple will sell as many as 60 million units this year, too.

Based on a 35% net profit an AirPods company would rake in $7 billion in profits anually. Hence the $175 billion valuation based on Kwant's calculations.

https://twitter.com/Midaskwant/status/1194095007399067648

Of course, there's plenty guesswork going on here but even allowing for errors the point is sitll the same – Apple has a winner on its hands with AirPods and AirPods Pro will only help drive that point home. So far no company has been able to compete with what AirPods offer in user experience and convenience.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.