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Portable batteries remain one of the most popular accessories in the modern world of electronics, but the founder and CEO of Anker suggests that the era of these devices may soon come to an end. According to reports from China, Anker CEO and creator Meng Yang suggested during a recent interview that external batteries are unlikely to become a product category with a market value of hundreds of billions of yuan. Moreover, he suggested that this segment could completely disappear in a few years.
The CEO compared power banks to former consumer electronics hits, including cassette, CD, and MP3 players. He added that many technological gadgets have a relatively short life cycle before they are replaced by newer engineering solutions. Consumer electronics is in fact a category of goods that appear rapidly and disappear just as quickly, Meng Yang noted. According to him, if a person has ever bought an MP3 player, he or she most likely also owned a cassette or CD player before, and the time period from the first purchase of such things to their complete abandonment is usually only about 10 years.
Such statements are quite unexpected and revealing, since it was portable chargers that once brought Anker worldwide fame. Established in 2011, the company demonstrated rapid growth in international markets thanks to sales of external batteries. However, in recent years, the structure of the brand’s commercial activities has undergone significant transformations. Publicly available financial statements show that by the end of 2025, Anker’s total revenue amounted to $4.21 billion, which shows an annual growth of 23.49%. Products for charging and energy storage brought the company $2.12 billion, accounting for about half of the total revenue. At the same time, classic power banks are no longer the main driver of financial success, as Anker now offers a much wider range of charging accessories, smart devices, and energy storage systems.
The positive dynamics of the company’s revenue growth is also recorded during 2026. According to the results of the first quarter, Anker reported revenues of about $1.05 billion, which is 26.93% higher than the same period last year. Nevertheless, net profit attributable to the company’s shareholders showed a 4.87% year-on-year decline, stopping at about $65.1 million.
Meng Yang’s predictions came after Anker’s management publicly admitted to an overly aggressive expansion of its portable battery lineup. At the annual shareholder meeting in 2025, Anker representatives reportedly agreed with criticism that it had too many charger configurations on the market. In 2024 alone, the brand sold approximately 100 different variations of power banks. The company frankly admitted that such a bloated portfolio provoked serious problems with product quality control. The management told investors that the range should never include a hundred modifications, as no manufacturer can realistically maintain the proper quality for 100 different models of external batteries at the same time. Although the demand for mobile batteries has not diminished at all in the current era, Meng Yan is convinced that they will eventually follow the fate of other once-indispensable devices that have gradually disappeared due to the evolution of technology.
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