Appeal of Headphones Could Help World’s Hard of Hearing, New Futuresource Hearables Research States

Futuresource Consulting announced the forthcoming availability of the new 'Worldwide Hearables Report'. According to the company's research, the growing appeal of aftermarket headphones is opening up the new ‘hearables’ sub-segment, catering for those with hearing loss and alleviating much of the expense and stigma attached to hearing aids. Amid these market developments, Futuresource will carry out in-depth original research to explore the enabling technologies, the underlying consumer attitudes, motivations and the size of the hearables opportunity.

Predicting that over 50% of all wireless headphones will incorporate Hearable Voice assistants, touch sensors and other interface technologies, a new report by Juniper Research forecasts that hearables will become the new standard for personal audio in under 5 years. The new report from Juniper has found that there will be an estimated 417 million hearables in use by 2022. This includes fitness-focused devices, hearing augmentation and purely audio-focused devices.

Munich-based Bragi is known for making truly wireless earphones, which are in fact the first truly smart hearables. Its first product, The Dash, won the CES 2015 Innovation Award Best of Innovation in the Headphones product category. When the idea of truly wireless stereo earbuds was still an idea, Bragi was working hard to enter the space, but their vision was going much further: truly wearables. As Nikolaj Hviid, Founder and CEO, Bragi GmbH puts it, "The purpose of wearables is to increase the data rate from the human to the machine."