Unless there are some international / regional law forcing TWS company to offer battery replacement program, solution 1 is never going to happen. Stocking replacement battery in itself is a logistic and financial nightmare for small company (li-ion battery naturally degrades overtime after manufacturing so company can't stock a large quantity of them or else most of the unused one will need to be discarded after a few years and the company taking a lost. Li-ion battery is also mostly made to order because different model needs different shape). The only way battery replacement can work on a financially sound level is that it either has to be quite expensive or it has to be quite large in scale - neither will likely going to happen on any TWS model. It makes sense for big smartphone company to offer battery replacement service because they have the scale of economy on their side when they sell millions of smartphones. But for TWS maker that might only sells ten of thousands of a single model ( (*this is a very optimistic estimation, most IEM company usually only sells a few thousand unit of any one single IEM model) at best? Not really. On the other hand, if replacing battery is too expensive, less people will want to do a battery replacement instead of just buying a new pair of TWS.
As for solution 2 - I bought my first pair of good IEM in 2004 when I joined Head-fi, haven't seen any real price drop on higher end IEM market for the last 17 years. In fact, the opposite happened (even during and after the 2008 market crash) where the price keeps going up and up. While I do hope to see price coming down, I won't hold my breath over it.
I agree with everything you write
IF the earphone market stays like it is.
But in my opinion (I have worked for a big technology concern)
the whole market is going to change in the next two decades because due to many coming developments in "every day technology" (smart home, cloud based applications, augmented reality etc.) the general usage of earphones will change/expand in many ways and more and more turn them into ”smart devices” with more functions than just music listening.
Right now you have the average consumer that already buys TWS and the hardcore audiophiles (us here!) that insist on traditional "analog" earphone technology for music listening (and maybe buy an extra pair of TWS or TWS adapter for other than music application). But once TWS and its different ways of using establishes more and more in our daily life, even the audiophile market will generate the need for a TWS device (that of course meets its standards in terms of audio quality). This means the market for traditional earphones will become smaller and smaller and force small audiophile companies to integrate chips (and batteries) into their devices... otherwise their chances of dying get bigger and bigger. And again, this will make it necessary for them to at least work together with other companies that help them to integrate these technologies (and also solve the problems linked to it...battery change is just one of them!). If one watches carefully, one can already see some audiophile companies trying to step their feet into that door (such as Fiio or Noble, for example) because they have realized, too, it is
essential for them to survive long term.
Because otherwise the big players will take over their market , because they can easily do it when the timing is right (they could create sub brands for example, bringing their technology to the audiophile market). And this is why I meant prices and concepts of consumer and audiophile orientated companies will get closer and closer. Because, again, the more TWS establishes in every day life and big companies improve their audio quality, even hardcore audiophiles won t pay thousands of dollars anymore for an "out dated" wired earphone. Again, I am not talking about the next two years, I am talking a bit more into the future.
You wrote that prices in the audiophile world have only gone up, but I d say the truth is more complex. The
ChiFi market and its acceptance is quite new to our hobby (I am also an earphone nerd since the Triple Fi) and shows how cheaply good earphones can be produced. That prices have gone up with the traditional companies is actually a reaction to that. Because they know the only way to keep their market position in times of Chifi is to create value and status through their pricing. But again, this works now, but not in future if they cannot offer a product that moves with the times (of changing technology)...
Of course one does not always have to agree with those developments, but in my opinion they are unstoppable. It`s quite similar to developments in the camera industry (from analog to digital to the competition with the smartphone industry) - makers either adjust their concepts and cooperate with other companies or they die...sad but true.