High end and real innovation?

Today I read about the new Apple EarPods.
They measure the sound at their output and tell the user if they are properly set into the ear by judging if in the ear the sound is as it should be. By the same measurement method they fit the sound to the acoustic situation in the ear, so that everyone has the proper bass weight to listen to. That they also offer noise cancelling is kind of more common meanwhile, although I admire this feature generally since introduced in headphones.

What I asked myself was:

what are the companies offering who sell their products for tenths and hundreds of thousand $ each?

Just heavy casework? Real sound innovation? Features that strongly improve the high end suffering of customers with varying acoustic situations, component matching, different media tonality?

Surely a company like Apple has the resources and mass sales for such innovation. But does High End business need bigger companies for providing such innovation…are the bigger ones doing it?

Why can’t bigger companies provide the exceptional sound quality smaller ones can and why isn’t there a smaller high end company specializing in real technical innovation?

Questions where some obvious answers come into mind…but maybe some of you have opinions or examples worth discussing.

They can, but don’t. A big company is all about economies of scale. The easiest way to get economies of scale is to produce to the lowest common denominator. The lowest common denominator either a) doesn’t know what “hi-fi” should sound like, b) if they do know, they don’t care enough for it, c) a & b

I agree…it’s like cars are just designed that good so that the mass of customers who care so so still buy it. The companies don’t aim for the best possible car design, motor etc…it’s just an add on to the whole package. Just like best sound quality for the price seems just an add on to the whole package for many audio companies.