Hearables are wireless electronic products worn in, on or around the ear. This includes products such as headphones, hearing aids, cochlear implants, and a growing ecosystem of related and new products. They have applications including combinations of infotainment, hearing assistance and augmentation, health monitoring and more, based primarily in the consumer electronics and healthcare sectors. This report aims to provide a comprehensive view of the entire industry, covering each product type individually, broader industry themes and review of the key technology at the core of this movement.

 

Hearables as a category was first coined back in 2014. At this time, the earliest commercialisation efforts around "true wireless" headphone products had just begun, with several new startups attracting a significant amount of attention. In headphones, significant portions of the market were switching to wireless options, enabled by Bluetooth® Low Energy radio, and Apple had just acquired Beats for $3bn. In hearing aids, the leading 6 (now 5) players dominated a multi-billion dollar market, but with the rate of new innovation beginning to increase.

 

Subsequent years have seen the product sector rise in both attention and revenue. The most significant event of all was the release of Apple's AirPods (December 2016), and the subsequent success of this product. This triggered efforts from the majority of major headphone players and several other consumer electronics players to produce their own true wireless headphones. In hearing assistance, the increasing sophistication of algorithmic techniques to configure and adjust these devices threatens the status quo of the hearing aid industry. This has been compounded with the passing of the 2017 Over-The-Counter Hearing Aid Act in the US and the subsequent new product category that it will create.

 

These developments have been enabled by underlying technology development ranging from how the devices process information, to their means of communication, to the sensors which are added (for example, to add health monitoring as an additional application), to the way that they are powered. Perhaps the most significant technology launch of all has been the Bluetooth® LE Audio in the Bluetooth 5.2 specification, which will only truly start to be introduced in products in 2020 (albeit alongside or replacing many proprietary options developed individually by others in the interim). The report reviews each of these technology areas in dedicated chapters, describing the current technologies that are available and assessing the potential of various emerging options.

 

However, all of these significant developments leave many unanswered questions as to the future of this industry. IDTechEx have developed the report to provide answers and supporting evidence to each of these questions, for example:

 

Answers to each of these questions and more can be found in dedicated chapters addressing themes around the future of hearing assistance and augmentation, and the future of biometric monitoring on the ear. The report then contains sections addressing the industries for each specific hearable product category (including headphones (true wireless, wireless, wired), hearing aids, OTC hearing aids, PSAPs and other hearables and cochlear implants). Finally, there are sections looking at key technology areas, including processors and communication, sensors (motion, optical heart rate, blood pressure, others), energy (primary and secondary batteries, other energy sources, plus wireless charging and energy harvesting), and then other components such as proximity sensors and microphones.

 

 

 

The report is the result of over two years of research, including both primary and secondary research from the analyst team at IDTechEx. This has included more than 20 primary interviews with leading players from across the spectrum of products and technologies involved, from large players such as Bose, Starkey, Widex, Oticon and Sonova, through to leading technology players such as Valencell, Well Being Digital and RelaJet, to prominent startups such as Nuheara, Olive Union, and more.

 

The market data and forecasts are a key part of this report. The extensive primary and secondary research for this report has enabled IDTechEx analysts to gather specific historic data and opinions on market direction from across the hearables product ecosystem. The report contains historic revenue data from 2010 - 2019 for 9 different product areas within hearables. This data, combined with insights from years of research, has then been used to create detailed market forecasts from 2020 to 2030. This all includes revenue, sales volume and pricing information, developed from a combination of specific primary and secondary data sources and estimates refined over the duration of the research effort.

 

This report on hearables also builds on nearly a decade of related research across the wider wearable technology field. This grounding in both the technology and product experience, as well as in the market data, provides additional experience which has been built from in the production of this report. See the associated report portfolio via the IDTechEx website for more details.

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