Industry
Phonak PR On Slow-Growth Hearing-Aid Market Misses The Point: It’s Not The Product, It’s The Price!
Phonak has cranked up its PR engine for the launch of the snazzy new Audeo hearing aid family, scoring a beautiful piece in BusinessWeek magazine on the wonders of its expensive new digital hearing aids with their jazzy colors and names. Read more
Sebotek Patent Infringement Suit Challenges Big Hearing Aid Companies
Sebotek’s patent infringement suit against several of the world’s largest hearing-aid manufacturers is a David-and-Goliath challenge to protect its intellectual property. It also throws a big element of uncertainty into a significant and fast-growing segment of the market for open-fit behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aids. Read more
On-Again, Off-Again Merger Of Hearing-Aid Giants Phonak and GN Resound May Be On Again
The CEO of Phonak Holding in Switzerland says he won’t be deterred, at least for now, by the German cartel office veto of the company’s acquisition of GN ReSound. Read more
And Then There Were Six: GN Store Nord Puts GN ReSound On The Block
I wrote about the “seven sisters” of the global hearing aid industry a while ago, but now it appears there will be six. Consolidation among the largest manufacturers continues as GN Store Nord considers selling GN ReSound, the world’s third-largest hearing-aid brand, to one of the other majors. Read more
Buy Or Build? Starkey Turns Semiconductor Design Over To AMI
Buy or build? That’s a question that always confronts system manufacturers. It makes sense to buy standard components, but you want to own the designs for components that give your product a performance edge. Starkey Laboratories has answered the question about a major component in its hearing aids by selling its chip design group to AMI Semiconductor, Inc., which produces DSP chips for a number of hearing aid manufacturers around the world. Read more
GN Acquisition Of Interton Accelerates Hearing-Aid Industry Consolidation
The big are getting bigger in the hearing-aid industry, with GN Store Nord, parent of the GN ReSound Group, acquiring German hearing-instrument developer Interton for DKK 350-million ($56 million USD). Read more
MedBio Announces Real-Time Voice Recognition
Last week I posted a note about my dream of a speech recognition system that could be mounted on a pair of eyeglasses and project real-time captions. This week I see MedBio Research Centre in Hawaii has announced just such a system. The MedBio “Speak ‘n Read” system integrates speech recognition into a Sony hand-held computer that records the speaker’s voice and immediately displays captions on both the computer screen and a small projector on a pair of eyeglass frames. The company’s web site lists plenty of qualifications on how well it works under what conditions, but it’s impressive there’s a commercial product out there now. Distribution will be through audiologists and other hearing professionals.
Sonic Innovations Banks on Innova Sales
Sonic Innovations issued its first-quarter earnings release a few days ago, and this weekend I finally listened to the webcast of CFO Stephen Wilson’s conference call with financial analysts. The bad news is that sales are down two percent from last year’s record first quarter. At first glance it looks like an indicator of weak demand and flat sales generally in an industry that should be seeing healthy growth from consumers whose need for hearing assistance is constantly growing. But Sonic Innovations is betting heavily on its new Innova line of hearing aids, which it didn’t introduce until early April after the fiscal quarter ended. Read more