Just hours after announcing two new pairs of headphones, parent company Jabra GN announced that the Elite 10 Gen 2 and Elite 8 Active Gen 2 mark the end of its consumer headphone business. That’s all it has written for the long-running Elite series after years of producing quality products.
The decision seems a bit sudden. Earlier this month, Jabra invited members of the media to its headquarters in Copenhagen. Now, only a couple of weeks later, GN is admitting that «the markets have changed» and trying to compete with Apple, Samsung, Sony and countless other headphone brands is no longer worth the cost.
«The investments required for future innovation and growth in this highly competitive space are considered unjustified», — GN writes in its press release.
In retrospect, Jabra’s defeat against much larger competitors was inevitable. The company’s peak came during the Elite 65t / 75t era between 2018 and 2020, when heavyweights like Sony and Samsung were just preparing to conquer the wireless market and before a number of other competitors entered the ring.
Eventually, the company reached a point where it simply could no longer withstand such important aspects as sound quality, noise reduction, etc. And more recently, the Elite lineup has become overly bloated and has begun to favor quantity over quality. Last year’s Elite 10 headphones were extremely comfortable, but they could no longer boast of quality.
Source: The Verge