Apple is All Ears-- How It Made Hearing Aids Affordable.
Hearing loss affects
millions of people, but hearing aids have been expensive and sales have been
dominated by a few companies. The new AirPods are going to challenge the status
quo.
Expert Opinion By Howard
Tullman, General managing partner, G2T3V and Chicago High Tech
Investors @howardtullman1
Sep 17, 2024
When you reach a certain
age, the content and frequency of the topics in your day-to-day conversations
change dramatically. They shift to matters like insurance, social security,
vaccinations, driver's license renewals, downsizing, medical and dental professionals
who are retiring, recommended mechanics, gardeners and such.
And of course,
medications: especially those miracle-working, OTC drugs which promise to
restore your memory, lubricate your joints, and put new pep in your step. Sleep
aids, digestive relief and diapers of all kinds are less overtly discussed, but
nonetheless central to these ongoing considerations. Whatever your age, these
are matters you always expected would be subjects for your parents to have to
deal with rather than you. Alas, age creeps up upon us all.
No small part of these
conversations is driven by the endless, omnipresent, and inescapable network TV
ads for every conceivable and newly invented or imagined disease or condition
related to skin, eyes, heart, lungs and you-know-what that can be abbreviated
by two or three letters or simulated by a vegetable. Honestly, I'll never look
at a carrot the same way again.01:49
And it's not just aimed
at seniors. The latest rage also seems to be ads that encourage parents to dose
their kids with various preventative shots and medications to avoid the
prospects of medical problems that may or may not occur decades down the line.
One series of ads warns against Pneumococcal disease which may not be active
for many years. A smaller dosed variation of the COVID shot is also now being
pushed by the CDC for kids aged 5 to 11. Don't even get me started on the
pitches being made on both coasts to start teenage children on the new
generation of weight loss drugs, so that slightly porky Pete or chubby
Charlotte won't be shunned forever by their peers.
And there's very little
prospect for millions of us to escape the onslaught without paying for the
privilege. This is the latest form of buying peace. The pain of advertising is
just another tax on the poor. When you consider that an average professional
football telecast runs more than three hours with only about 12 minutes of
actual, on-field, action, and the rest of the time jammed with ads, it's easy
to understand why streaming without ads continues to explode as we all attempt
to flee the flood of indiscriminate promotion and marketing. In fact, streaming
viewership is actually closing in on broadcast and pay TV and I'd expect the
competitive contest to be quite close or even by the end of 2025.
One of the products that
has largely been absent from broadcast advertising (although a huge presence in
direct mail) has been hearing aids. That's because the manufacturers and
providers, having enjoyed a government-protected oligopoly that prohibited over-the-counter
sales and required prescriptions, could literally wait until the customers came
to them. After the barriers began to erode in 2017, and OTC sales were
eventually permitted for people who had moderate hearing loss, the retail
marketplace was still modest even with players like Costco moving aggressively
into the space because the FDA did nothing to implement the new rules until the
Biden administration demanded action.
But that safe harbor
ended entirely last week when Apple announced that--in combination with the iPhone
-- the new AirPods Pro 2 will function as a hearing aid, approved by the FDA.
Consumers will be able to self-administer a test run by an application on the
iPhone to check their hearing. Far more importantly, these new AirPods will
sell for less than $300, as opposed to $4,000-to-$5,000 for traditional
devices. Apple isn't alone in the new space - Sony and Jabra and others
will have similar solutions. But, as
always, Apple's entry makes the market.
Not only is it about
time, it's also only fair. Because they're the ones whose iTunes blew out our
ear drums for years with the same ubiquitous little white devices.
