Audio sells ₹2,869.4 crore a year on Amazon India. Indian D2C sells 39.8% of the units and takes 21.8% of the money

The measure

Sales on Amazon India: the "bought in past month" figure at its lower bound, times the product-page price, times twelve. Read on 31 October 2026, during Amazon's festive sale and before Diwali. Prices on the other sellers are the same day's.

The shelf sells at least ₹2,869.4 crore a year, 908,100 units a month, across 70 brands.

Who sells audio on Amazon

boAt sells the most units, 22.2%, and is third by money at 14.9%, behind Sony (18.1%) and OnePlus (15.1%). The top three take 48.2%. By company the order changes: OnePlus and realme, both of the BBK and OPPO group, take 23.3% together, and Samsung takes 17.4% once JBL is added, because Samsung owns Harman.

Two units in five, one rupee in five

Indian D2C owns the low end. It sells 39.8% of the units and takes 21.8% of the money, at most 22.6% if every brand whose owner we have not confirmed is D2C. Multinationals take 43.9% of the money from 16.7% of the units. The money is in Sony's soundbars and headphones and in the Chinese phone-makers' earbuds.

What the shelf sells

Earbuds are a Chinese-owned segment: 47.1% of earbud money, against 29.1% for multinationals and 21.7% for Indian D2C. The Chinese-owned brands sit mid-ladder at ₹1,724 at the median; D2C earbuds sit at ₹998 and multinational ones at ₹3,399. Soundbars are 23.3% of the money and D2C holds 15.1% of them. Speakers are where D2C comes closest: boAt 32.7% against JBL 33.2%.

Amazon does not split earbuds by form, so the form comes from the title: true wireless ₹1,303.8 crore, neckband ₹73.7 crore, wired ₹70.0 crore. True wireless is 45.4% of the shelf. By the country of origin the product page states, 51.7% of the money is on listings made in China and 25.0% in India. Two sellers hold the buy box on 92.0% of the money.

Five sellers, one model

One price per model and seller, the lowest in-stock price across colours; a negative gap means the first seller is cheaper. Marketplaces against chains: 343 pairs. The marketplace was cheaper on 199, the same on 108 and dearer on 36. The chains agree with each other on 93 of 226 pairs. Poorvika is the dearest of the five: it was cheaper than Amazon on 0 of 32 models. 18 pairs more than 50% apart were checked by hand and left out.

The brand decides the gap. Sony sells at one price on Amazon and at Reliance: a median gap of 0 over 17 models. boAt is cheaper on Amazon on 14 of 15, by 18.2% at the median, and Samsung on 8 of 8.

Poorvika's price history, 2026

Poorvika publishes a dated selling-price list for every product. 102 of its 414 audio products changed price in 2026: 87 rises and 51 cuts, a median 9.1% each way. realme and OnePlus raised and almost never cut; Boult cut 10 times and never raised. This is one retailer's list, not the market.

On Blinkit, D2C leads

632 distinct audio products across six stores; 25 brands are in all six. The largest by products are boAt (100), Boult (52), Noise (51), JBL (36), Hammer (29). By product count, Indian D2C is 45.9%, multinationals 17.2% and Chinese-owned 6.2%; 22.6% are small names whose owner we have not confirmed. Quick commerce is D2C's shelf; Amazon's money is not. Indiranagar shows fewer products because Blinkit filled its results with power banks and cables. Blinkit shows no sales figure, so these are counts, never added to Amazon.

What share of each company's sales this is

boAt's Amazon audio is about a seventh of what it reports for the whole company. Noise sells mostly smartwatches, so its share is of a business that is not mainly audio. The read is in the festive sale, so a whole year on Amazon is likely lower. boAt's FY26 figure is from its press release; Noise and Boult are Registrar of Companies filings. Sony, OnePlus, JBL and realme do not report Indian audio revenue separately. We found no reported revenue for Zebronics, Portronics or pTron in Entrackr or Inc42, searched on 3 November 2026.

What we predicted

We wrote down our predictions before we read the shelf. 3 of 8 held. The wrong ones share a cause: we took the story that D2C leads audio at face value. It is true of units and of quick commerce, and not of money.

Method

Amazon India: 25 searches, three pages each, by format, by price band and by brand, 792 distinct listings, every product page that shows a sales figure opened (621), 612 admitted. The shelf is Amazon's own category: in-ear and open-ear headphones, over-ear and on-ear headphones, PC headsets, Bluetooth, party and outdoor speakers, and soundbars; cases and accessories are left out. Flipkart: the same searches. Reliance Digital, Poorvika and Vijay Sales: their audio ranges. Blinkit: five searches in Connaught Place (Delhi), Powai and Bandra West (Mumbai), Indiranagar and Koramangala (Bengaluru) and Banjara Hills (Hyderabad). Models are matched across sellers by brand, model and format. Every owner is researched by hand.

The full report, with every table and chart: audio on Amazon India and the phone chains (PDF). If you are building in consumer electronics, book a discovery call.