China's $40 Speakers Are Destroying A $68 Billion Monopoly — Here's How

Walk into a Best Buy and you will see a speaker on the shelf for $149.Now, walk about 27 m away, still inside that same store, and pull out your phone. You can buy a speaker that looks almost the same for just $40. It has the same kind of driver inside, the same kind of battery, and the same kind of circuit board. But, here is the strange part. The $149 speaker comes from a company that also owns 12 other speaker brands. Some of those brands sit on the very same shelf, right next to it, pretending to compete.The $40 speaker comes from a small factory near Shenzhen, China. It costs about $16 to build. So, how does a gap of $109 happen between two speakers built almost the same way? And why did that $149 company spend over a year fighting a smaller rival in federal court over speakers that look too much alike? This story is about a $68 billion speaker industry and how cheap factories in China are quietly taking it apart, piece by piece. But first, you need to see exactly what that $109 gap is made of.