Dubai

Move over Bose. Stop the Beats Apple. Sony is looking to take a piece of the high-resolution audio market popularised by those company’s high-end headphones.

Sony Corp launched two headphones priced above $300 (Dh1,101) at its new Dubai showroom on Monday.

“We can see many Beats and Bose headphones [in the UAE market. This over $300 [high-res headphone] range is seeing increasing demand. Still, the majority of headphones are [priced] below $300,” said Satoru Arai, head of Middle East Marketing Company at Sony.

Arai said that there is demand for high-res audio products in the Middle East, although they are still not popular. To be considered high-resolution, the audio quality must be 64-bit and 96-kHz.

Virgin Megastore and Dubai Duty Free are some of the locations where high-res audio equipment are sold in the UAE, he said.

At Monday’s event, the Japanese consumer electronics firm launched the MDR-Z7, priced at Dh2,599 and featuring a 70mm-HD driver unit, and the MDR-1A, priced at Dh1,199, which utilises a 40mm-HD driver unit. Both look like traditional headphone that forego Beats more youth-oriented design and are designed to reproduced high quality sounds

Sony also launched high-res products, including two Walkmans — the NW-ZX2 and the NW-A15, which Sony is the smallest and lightest high-res digital music player, two portable headphone amplifiers, wireless speakers and a stereo recorder. While Apple’s Beats is a major player in the audio equipment market, Kono said Sony’s headphones will appeal to wider demographic.

“The Beats [headphones] focus on the bass sound. Our headphones are not just for the bass sound,” said Jun Kono, senior manager of sound product marketing department at Sony.

The company’s share in that segment stands at around three per cent in the UAE, according to Kono.

Arai expects the UAE market for headphones priced more than $300 to grow by 15 per cent in 2015 over the previous year, during which 750,000 headphone units were sold.

Sony will also create more displays for its high–res audio range in the UAE. He expects the new products to boost its revenue in 2015 but declined to give a figure. Sony’s high-res audio line-up is already available at the Sony store at The Dubai Mall and some Jumbo showrooms in the UAE, except for the PHA-1A, which will be available by the end of April. The products are priced from Dh699 to Dh5,000.