Will 2024 be the year of Apple’s Vision Pro or Bluetooth’s Auracast?

It’s almost wo weeks since Apple shipped its first tranche of Vision Pros to around 100,000 lucky boys and girls (although I suspect the majority were lucky boys).  According to the New York Times, the average cost of a Vision Pro is close to $4,600 by the time you’ve fitted it out with the recommended accessories.  If you’re outside the US, there’s a significant premium on top of that.  So, the first tranche of sales of around 200,000 units will have netted Apple in excess of $1 billion.   That’s a staggering achievement, as is folding all of the tech into the product.  Bringing it to market is an amazing step.  The question is whether it’s going to impinge on very many people? 

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Auracast and the Evolution of the Earbud Case

Sometimes, it needs what seems to be a small, tangential innovation to make a product successful.  At the time, it may not seem much, but it can result in the product acquiring a life of its own.  One product which is making its way along that trajectory is the humble earbud charging case.

The history of the charging case is quite interesting.  Stereo wireless earbuds were a long time coming.  It needed some serious technical innovation by a couple of chip companies to make them possible – new technology by Cambridge Silicon Radio (now part of Qualcomm) to let them receive and render separate left and right audio channels, and small near-field magnetic induction chips from another silicon company – NXP to send wireless signals through our heads.  It then needed the brilliance of a German startup called Bragi to turn these concepts into working stereo earbuds, kickstarting the whole hearables market.  It has become the fastest growing technology product ever, eclipsing even the iPhone in its growth.

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The Hearables Market – a Covid Update

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”  Dickens’ could have written that opening line to preface an account of the Covid year for the hearables industry.  Over the last six months consumer demand for earbuds has risen to an unprecedented level.  In contrast, hearing aid manufacturers have been dealt a body blow, with sales tumbling by up to 75%.  As one industry executive put it “we’d have done better if we were an airline”.  Covid has also had unexpected effects on the service industries which have been traditional drivers of hearables growth.  Audio streaming services like Spotify have seen listening times go down, while video streaming and video conferencing have experienced unprecedented demand.

As countries came out of lockdown during the summer, we saw further shifts in usage, but it’s apparent that overall, hearables have done well out of the crisis.  That trend looks set to continue as we face a second wave of the pandemic and further lockdowns.

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Bluetooth Covid Contact-Tracing Apps

In the previous article I looked at the tools the UK Government has available to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.  Essentially, they have two.  The first is to increase the number of ventilators and ICU beds, which gives more people with severe respiratory infections a chance to recover.  That means that doctors and politicians can avoid the unpleasant choice of deciding who gets treated and who does not, but only if the number of infections are curtailed in the first place, so that we don’t run out of ventilators.

The second is the lockdown tool.  It is currently a crude On/Off switch, which limits infections by keeping everyone at home.  At the moment, it’s not flexible – you’re either locked down, or you’re not, unless you’re a key worker or in an essential industry.  The hope is that few key workers will be infected, either because they have sufficient Personal Protection Equipment, or they’re able to social distance whilst doing their jobs.  Everyone else has to stay at home.  A lucky few can continue to work, but most are either furloughed or become unemployed, putting the economy in stasis.

The Government, quite rightly, is desperate to find ways to ease the lockdown.  The question is how to do that without immediately seeing infection rates rise?

The flavour of the day is to roll out smartphone apps which can trace whether you have come into contact with someone else who is infected.  The theory goes that if you do, you can be alerted and stay at home until you’re tested.  If you have coronavirus, you self-isolate.  If you don’t, you’re free to go back to work.  Like many proposals for phone apps, it sounds simple, which is why it’s so appealing.  Particularly to people like Matt Hancock, who has always had a bit of a penchant for phone apps, which he believes will save the NHS.  What nobody is mentioning, is that for contact-tracing to work, we will need the ability to provide at least half a million additional tests that can be administered at home every day. 

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Hearables market to reach $80 billion in 2025

Who could have guessed, back in 2014, that a Kickstarter campaign would lead to an $80 billion market segment in just over a decade?  But that’s what is happening with hearables, where a new report predicts that it will reach that size in 2025.

The growth of earbuds, which are now the “must-have” hearable for around 80 million users, has turned into the fastest growing consumer electronics product sector ever, eclipsing even the iPhone.  That growth is set to accelerate even more with the launch of a new Bluetooth LE Audio standard at CES 2020, which allows designers even more freedom, higher quality and new audio applications.

It all started when Bragi managed to raise almost $3.4m dollars for a new concept – a set of stereo earbuds which could stream music as well as measuring your vital signs.  A raft of other startups managed to raise over $50 million in crowdfunding investment between them before Apple arrived with their AirPods, and the rest is history.

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Forget 5G and the IoT – MWC 2019 was all about audio

Mobile World Congress is an odd event.  It’s where the GSMA attempts to set the mobile agenda for the coming year, where major infrastructure deals are done behind closed doors and where the rest of the industry shows off its latest products.  This year, the big message was that 5G is coming, whatever that may be.  The IoT was relegated to something that’s mainly happening in China and the startup community.  What I found interesting was that audio was far more prominent than I can recall in any of the last 30 years of MWC and its predecessor shows.

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