Bragi sells its wireless headphone business and leaves the ‘true wireless’ market

German startup Bragi, known for its wireless headphones The Dash, has announced the sale of its entire hardware business to an unknown buyer. This operation involves the closure of effective operations and the cessation of sales of all its products. In addition to this, Bragi has stated that from now on he will focus on licensing his artificial intelligence technology business.

No stock since January

The Wareable website specializing in wearable devices published the Plans of the European Company yesterday. In January they already noticed that something was not right, as there was no stock of any of their products. By contacting the company, they were assured that they planned to have stock again shortly.

For a company that has only a couple of products for sale, not having stock should have already raised the alarms. In any case, Wareable yesterday obtained confirmation of the closure of this part of the business:

Bragi’s suite of technologies is used beyond our products in those of our partners and other headphone brands. The Dash Pro featured ultra-efficient, groundbreaking artificial intelligence and software that could be updated to add new features like Amazon’s Alexa, language translation and personalized hearing.

With the sale of our product business, Bragi has completed its transformation into a software, artificial intelligence and industrial property license company.

At AppleSolutions we had the opportunity to test their first product in early 2017. The Dash headphones were an interesting option to monitor the sport and enjoy music without any other devices. Although the experience was not perfect given the absence of GPS and a wider variety of sports activities (they were reduced to running, swimming and cycling).

That and a fairly high price of $290 has been the causes of the low interest they have had in the market.

Google and Fitbit were interested in 2017

According to Wareable, Bragi had a moment of bonanza and good press when several top-tier technology companies were interested in acquiring it. One of them was Google, which intended to use the technology in its own wireless headphones, the Pixel Buds. These search engine headphones are not completely wireless like Bragi’s, but they do push the translation and support of Google Assistant as the main claim.

This acquisition seemed like a good idea, although it obviously did not materialize. At the same time, Fitbit also expressed interest in acquiring Bragi, although it did not come to fruition either. At the same time, Fitbit launched its Flyers to accompany its smartwatches when it comes to sports.

The excitement generated around the AirPods since its launch in December 2016 has pushed other large companies to try to get on the true-wireless headphone train. In late 2018, Ming-Chi Kuo claimed that both Google and Amazon were preparing to launch their own fully wireless headphones in 2019.

The appearance of attendees in this type of wearables makes them the ideal candidate to expand their tentacles beyond the home. So it’s an obvious move. For now, the AirPods have just been renewed and released a version with «Hey Siri» built in. We will see what the proposals of these competitors are like.