Quote Originally Posted by Mr Peabody
It just makes sense for a speaker company to offer an I-pod dock. You go broke if you don't keep up. What if B&W never made a center channel speaker? The headphones still has me a bit puzzled unless B&W thought they had something to offer that's not available yet. But..... Klipsch, Denon, and even Monster are jumping on the headphone wagon. Actually, with B&W's studio side of things one has to wonder why they haven't done this already.

Here's the deal, it's still an insult in my book until I see B&W on an infomercial like Bose. Then I will admit they took it too far.
If I'm not mistaken, B&W is (or at least is one of) the best selling Speaker Brand worldwide (I think Bose is king in North America - but not nearly as big elsewhere).... So B&W understands mass market appeal and is willing to make products that are not strictly aimed at die-hard audiophiles... But the key difference with them and Bose is that even those 'non-audiophile' products from B&W are still high quality, rather than just gimmicks...

The reason for headphones is because that is one of the fastest growing markets... The natural first upgrade for members of the iPod generation is to a better pair of cans... And Monster has shown that even the mass market is willing to spend $350 on Cans... So B&W could make money in that market and push their brand name even further into public consciousness...