According to the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, there are a total of 360 million people with disabling hearing loss worldwide. About one in three people over the age of 65 are affected by hearing loss.
The Aging Society Is Exacerbated, And The Hearing Aid Market Is Expanding
According to the United Nations, by 2050, 1 in 6 people worldwide will be 65 years or older (16%), and this number will be 11 (9%) in 2019; by 2050, in Europe and In North America, 1 in 4 people are 65 or older.
In 2018, the world ’s population aged 65 or over has unprecedentedly exceeded the number of people under the age of 5. In addition, the population aged 80 years or over is expected to triple, from 143 million in 2019 to 426 million in 2050.
Among these aging populations, two-thirds of people with hearing loss over 60 years of age will have a hearing prevalence ranging from 12.8% to 34.7%. Hearing decline is the most intuitive functional degradation of the elderly.
Due to such physical symptoms, the elderly will become psychological symptoms, so they fall into silence, stay away from society, and even cause depression, dementia and other diseases.
It is estimated that six out of ten elderly people will need hearing aids. The global hearing aid industry market is expected to reach $ 3 billion by 2020.
Hearing Aid Market Share
Although the hearing aid market has a bright future, the market has been occupied by six major brands all year round. The market share of Chinese hearing aid brands is very low.
At present, the price of a single hearing aid ranges from several thousand to tens of thousands. The six major brands account for about 90% of the market share. ReSound in Denmark, Phonak in Switzerland, Signia in Germany, Oticon in Denmark, Widex in Denmark, and Starkey in the United States. Chinese hearing aids (brand: ea) have a market share of less than 10%.
Hearing aids are devices that amplify sounds reasonably, and are divided into analog hearing aids and digital hearing aids. Hearing aids work by the principle that sound waves are received by a microphone and converted into an analog electronic signal. This analog signal is picked up by an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and converted into a digital signal; then it is processed and adjusted by a DSP algorithm. The digital signal is then reconverted into analog form, passed to the receiver, and converted into sound waves heard by the hearing aid user.
Although the hearing aid market has a bright future, the market has been occupied by six major brands all year round. The market share of Chinese hearing aid brands is very low.
At present, the price of a single hearing aid ranges from several thousand to tens of thousands. The six major brands account for about 90% of the market share. Denmark's AAC, Switzerland Sharp, Germany's Siemens, Denmark's Oticon, Denmark's Vivo, and Star Gram is the representative. Chinese hearing aids (brand: ea) have a market share of less than 10%.
The 4 largest DSP IP providers in the world
Hearing aids work by the principle that sound waves are received by a microphone and converted into an analog electronic signal. This analog signal is picked up by an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and converted into a digital signal; then it is processed and adjusted by a DSP algorithm. The digital signal is then reconverted into analog form, passed to the receiver, and converted into sound waves heard by the hearing aid user.
The algorithms used by different manufacturers of hearing aids are different, reflecting the independent professional characteristics of each. The performance of hearing aids depends on the different calculation methods and speeds of the chip. Here, the DSP is only briefly described.
DSP (digital signal processing) chip refers to a chip capable of implementing digital signal processing technology. DSP can quickly implement processing of signal acquisition, transformation, filtering, evaluation, enhancement, compression, identification, etc. to obtain signals that meet people's needs.
The high-end DSP market has been monopolized by developed countries for a long time, and integration and programmability will become two major trends in the future.
There are three major DSP chip manufacturers in the world: Texas Instruments (TI), Analog Devices (ADI), and Motorola (TI), of which TI occupies most of the international market share. Domestic research on DSP started late in the world's top 4 DSP IP providers. Independently developed DSP chips developed by Huarui (China Electronics Division 14) and soul core (China Electronics Group 38) gradually broke foreign monopolies, but Currently it is mostly used in non-civilian fields.
The use of machine learning in hearing aids to improve existing related technologies has become a rising trend in the industry, such as deep learning-based multi-modal speech enhancement, deep neural network classification to separate speech and noise, and deep learning to optimize noise reduction. The experience will eventually be ubiquitous. In the future, smart hearing aids will implement the following technologies: Hearing cognitive technology: that is, wherever you want to hear, just listen. By studying the neural response, we can decode the target speaker of the hearing-impaired person in a multi-person speech environment.
This work combines two advanced technologies-speech processing technology and auditory attention decoding technology. Binaural beamforming technology: Super directional microphone technology. The goal is to better improve the ability of hearing-impaired wearers to listen selectively in a background noise environment by making hearing aids smarter.
Vision guidance technology: combining a beamforming microphone set with an eyeball tracker, the eyeball tracker can sense the gaze of the eye and guide the direction of the microphone accordingly. Can the visually guided directional system help hearing-impaired people to listen selectively in multiple noise sources?
Conclusion
The hearing aid market will gradually grow, and the capabilities of digital hearing aids will also increase. Hearing aid wear rates will also increase and people's lives will be bet
