The wireless earbuds market barely moved this spring. Apple did, though, just a little. Fresh numbers from Omdia show Apple shipped 16.8 million true wireless stereo devices in the second quarter of 2026, up 1.2% from a year earlier, while the overall market actually shrank 0.7% during that same stretch.
That gap matters more than the raw percentages suggest. Apple now controls 20.5% of the entire TWS market, roughly double Xiaomi’s second-place share of 10.4%. Samsung sits at 6.7%, Huawei follows close behind at 6.2%, and OPPO rounds out the top five with 5.0%. Strip Apple out of the picture, and almost every major player either shrank or barely held steady. OPPO was the lone exception, growing 14.9% year over year once you factor in OnePlus sales too.
Here’s where things get more interesting, though. Omdia didn’t just track standard earbuds, the kind that sit inside your ear canal. They also broke out a separate category called open wireless stereo, or OWS, covering clip-on and ear-hook designs that leave your ear canal completely open. That category is growing fast, up 12% for the quarter. Shokz leads it outright, shipping 1.1 million units for a 10.3% share and a staggering 107.9% jump from last year.
Apple actually leaned into this exact trend at its September event, with hardware engineering VP Dave Pakula calling the AirPods 5 the company’s “beloved open-ear fit” and bragging about having “the industry’s best ANC in an open-ear design.” Funny thing is, Omdia apparently doesn’t count the standard AirPods as part of the OWS category at all, so Apple’s open-ear marketing push and Omdia’s data aren’t quite talking about the same products.
Rounding out the rest of the OWS leaderboard, Sanag holds 7.6% share with modest 2.4% growth, Huawei sits at 7.0% despite a 4.1% decline, Baseus jumped nearly 30% to claim 6.6%, and Edifier trails at 5.4% with growth barely above flat.
Omdia thinks this is only the beginning too. Their forecast has OWS shipments climbing from 43.9 million units this year all the way to 90.5 million by 2030, which would mean nearly one in every five TWS devices sold worldwide falls into the open-ear category by then. Read the full report here.
