I rarely see any earbuds except AirPods in the US, they are the overwhelming majority. Several other countries I’ve worked in also have pretty ubiquitous AirPods penetration, though not quite at the level of the US.

I have a few friends that bought every inexpensive alternative to AirPods, had a poor experience with all of them, finally relented and bought AirPods. Now they won’t use anything else. They spent more money avoiding AirPods than buying them.

Apple did a really good job with the AirPods.

Especially if you're in the ecosystem. I can use them with all my devices, and they switch seamlessly.

It was like that in the wired earpod era too. It just carried over when they dumped the headphone jack and sold you the airpod you didn't need before. I still remember those early ipod commercials with the silhouettes dancing with the white cord.

I'm suprised, might just have been lucky I got a pair of Jlab pro whatever for 30$ at Canadian Tire and have been getting other ones when I lose them for years now - never thought of shopping for something else.

A casual search showed several studies over several years estimating 70-80% of young people owning airpods, which matched my irl expirence. In the past random earbuds and headphones were common but apple has taken the market by storm.

A lot of those nondescript earbuds are indistinguishable from AirPods at a distance. Every electronics store around here sells $30 AirPod knock-offs that one has to look pretty closely at to tell they are not the genuine article.