The variety of counterfeit wi-fi earbuds seized by US border customs in 2021 has already surpassed final 12 months’s whole, in response to a report from The Information. It’s an indication of how keen the makers of those knockoffs are to maintain driving the sustained recognition of earbuds like Apple’s AirPods and people from Samsung, Jabra, Bose, Sony, and different firms.

According to the report, “roughly 360,000 counterfeit wireless headphones” — valued at $62.2 million — have been nabbed within the first 9 months of fiscal 2021. That’s nicely above the 295,000 pairs that have been confiscated throughout the entire of fiscal 2020. Just yesterday, US Customs and Border Protection announced a major confiscation in Cincinnati.

Around 80 % of fakes getting into the US come from China, and their producers see an enormous alternative: Strategy Analytics forecasted worldwide gross sales of Bluetooth headsets to be greater than 300 million in 2020, and the true wi-fi earbuds market surged by 90 %. Apple nonetheless holds a commanding lead in market share, although a crowded discipline has reduce into that dominance. Research agency Canalys estimates that Apple took in no less than $16 billion from AirPods gross sales final 12 months, in response to The Information report. The introduction of the AirPods Pro in 2019 gave scammers an opportunity to try to wring much more cash out of unknowing consumers.

Image: US Customs and Border Protection

OnePlus needed to cope with a clumsy controversy final September when US Customs and Border Protection seized a cargo of the corporate’s earbuds and described them as counterfeit AirPods. There are design variations between the 2, however the blatant AirPod clones are getting nearer and nearer to the actual factor.

Some counterfeit earbuds are suspected to have been created “with genuine molds stolen from factories that work with Apple.” Others can mimic the AirPods pairing course of on an iPhone and show a correct Apple serial quantity. But even in these conditions, there are nonetheless refined tells (like a bogus firmware model) that reveal a product as a fraud.

Highlighting the potential security dangers, Apple says it has a world effort in place to deal with the difficulty of knockoffs, and it’s working with regulation enforcement and e-commerce websites to stop prospects from being duped wherever potential.