I'm reminded of a quote: "the best camera is the one you have on you." People ditched their digital cameras en masse when smartphones became popular. Not because the smartphone cameras were better, but because they were convenient.

The market has spoken. People drastically prefer the convenience of Bluetooth over the quality that comes along with having to constantly untangle wires or having audio cut in and out from failing wires.

On top of that, universal adoption of noise cancellation has resulted in dramatically better quality in practice than what people were using in 2005. Yes, wired headphones with noise cancellation are even better, but not to a point that people are willing to sacrifice the convenience of going wireless.

> People ditched their digital cameras en masse when smartphones became popular. Not because the smartphone cameras were better, but because they were convenient.

The early 00's transition from CRT to LCD monitors was similar. The early desktop LCD panels were expensive, had worse refresh rates, worse contrast, and worse colour rendering. To this day, even very good modern displays struggle to match CRT motion rendering.

But LCDs are so much thinner and lighter, and that was enough to overcome the disadvantages.

I think this is a great explanation. To add to it, I believe there is something durability too. My basic Jabra wireless earbuds from 2020 are just now getting faulty (just battery stuff). In a similar time period from 2010 and 2015 I went through at least 6 pairs of wired headphones or earbuds, the jacks would fail or the wires would just stop working.