This week on the Future Ear Radio Podcast, I’m joined by my right-hand man, Mr. Andy Bellavia, to discuss the always evolving hearables and hearing health landscape. Our conversation explores a wide variety of topics, including:
- The Presidential Executive Order issued last week that urged the FDA to accelerate the drafting of its over-the-counter hearing aid guidelines.
- Why what’s happening with the underlying technology in the hearables space is ultimately much more interesting than the OTC law, and will probably end up superseding OTC in many ways.
- The three-headed beast that stands in the way of hearing solution adoption – price, stigma and friction – and how each of these three buckets of detractors are slowly being chipped away at (will be writing a full fledged essay on this!).
- The emergence of BragiOS and the whole idea of app-ecosystems specifically tailored for hearables
- Bragi’s key partnerships with BragiOS that include Mimi, Skullcandy, and AudioBurst.
- The impact of voice technology to the long-term hearables trajectory, and the way that CEO’s at Bragi, MiMi, Skullcandy, and Audioburst are all thinking about voice’s role with hearables into the future.
- As a hearing aid wearer himself who uses Google Assistant with his hearing aids, Andy is the poster child of how this intersection of the two technologies works today.
Every single week it seems like we’re hit with another new piece of news that continues to change the complexity of this landscape. This just means all the more fodder to discuss on the podcast as we continue to try and wrap our heads around the dizzying pace of change.
-Thanks for Reading-
Dave
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dave Kemp:
All right. We are joined here today by the OG guest, Mr. Andy Bellavia himself. Welcome back to the podcast. It’s been a while since we’ve just done a solo episode, you and I, so, I’m really looking forward to this. Do you want to share a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Andy Bellavia:
Oh, by now, I think everybody knows who I am if they’ve listened to your podcast, but I’m the director of market development for Knowles Corp, and I’m actually responsible for the in-ear products which are not regulated hearing aids. So, music earphones, professional musician IEMs, radio communications and the like, and hearable devices, which we’ll talk about. But I am also a hearing aid wearer for the last three years, probably should have been the last eight years, which will be part of the conversation, and I just can’t resist throwing in that this’ll be Dave’s last recording as a single person. I have to congratulate him for his upcoming marriage and wish him the best.
Dave Kemp:
Thank you. Yes, as I mentioned before we were recording, I’m in the throes of wedding week, it’s here, that’s why the podcast has been a little sporadic in its publication lately. I’ve got a lot going on in my personal life right now, but yes, very, very exciting stuff. I will soon be married here. So, anyway, for today’s conversation, I wanted to bring Andy on as like my right-hand man when it comes to this whole topic, which is really understanding, as he mentioned, where he sits in this whole, this world. It never really was hearing aids, it was always kind of the hearable side of things. And as hearables and hearing aids converge, his world and his perspective as a hearing aid user is just more and more relevant than ever to the hearing health world where I live, right?
Dave Kemp:
And so, like the last few conversations that I’ve had on the podcast, have all revolved around this theme of like, there’s a ton of momentum that’s taking place in the mild to moderate end of the market, mild to moderate types of hearing losses, and so, we’re seeing all kinds of companies, from Bose and Apple, introducing entirely new devices like Bose’s hearing aid, Apple’s conversational booster enhancement, which is a new feature for AirPods Pro. So, we’re seeing the consumer tech giants in this audio world become more and more focused on hearing health.
Dave Kemp:
And then we’re seeing a lot of the hearing health players like the hearing aid manufacturers ReSound with Jabra, they’ve introduced a hearing aid under that brand that’s going to start in Costco, you have Sonova buying Sennheiser’s consumer audio division, and then you have a lot of these really interesting companies that were originally either apps or they were standalone devices, and the real core of their expertise and their value was their software, and they’re pivoting toward licensing their software, their capabilities.
Dave Kemp:
And so, all of that’s to say that like this portion of the market, where Andy, he says, “I should have been wearing something for the last eight years,” he’s really, I think, describing the core of the gap of the market, which is like, eight years ago, there wasn’t a whole lot that existed for someone like him that is in this more sort of introductory level of hearing loss, that they can wear as a sort of a situational device until it really graduates into being something that needs to be an all-day device. Historically, that’s always just been hearing aids, but here we are in 2021, and it’s like a just massive tidal wave of new things that cater to all kinds of different people that have these milder losses and they want to do something to preserve their hearing. And so, that’s what’s so exciting.
Dave Kemp:
And there has been even more news since my last episode, that I wanted to bring Andy on to talk about. So, first things first, let’s start with the executive order. This is kind of a confusing thing because it’s really not any news per se, other than, it seems to be, the executive order is that it’s an urging of the FDA to draft the guidelines that they’ve been in the midst of drafting since, I guess, like 2020 and before that. And so, we were supposed to have something, the pandemic hit, so, that definitely pushed the timeline back, but it seems like one of the big pieces of takeaways here is that the timeline should maybe be accelerated now, set in about 120 days.
Dave Kemp:
So, I just want to kick things off here with you to get your sense of like, your takeaways from this executive order, and then I think that will dovetail into some of the tech stuff that’s happening, that ultimately might render a lot of this whole OTC law almost a little bit obsolete with what’s coming on the tech horizon.
Andy Bellavia:
Okay. Yeah, I was encouraged to see that the President is personally getting involved in this to try and kick things along a little bit. I mean, we’ve been centering on this timing now that likely in the autumn, the FDA will release the guidelines, and then you have a 60-day comment period, then you have up to 180 days to actually release the regs. So, we’re talking sometime in the back half of next year before things get rolling. And of course, companies are preparing for this based on what they’ve seen, but it’ll take some time for them then to get approval for the devices, especially if pre-market is needed.
Andy Bellavia:
So, in other words, if they have to get the devices pre-approved, it’s going to take even more time. And for my part, I actually hope that so we can talk about that later. So, we seem to be homing in on a timing where we actually have something available and products hitting the market, let’s say, a year from now or at least in the latter half of 2022, which is a good thing. But the report itself, I was actually very disappointed in the report. It made a lot of simplifications, it barely discussed the role of the audiologist, and when it did discuss the role of the audiologist, it just implied that the audiologist is nothing more than a cost adder, and it made no distinguishing at all between mild to moderate hearing loss, which is the OTC target, simply saying that over-the-counter hearing aids will be available for everyone and they’ll save people a lot of money.
Andy Bellavia:
So, I was actually disappointed in the report, even though I’m glad that President is actually nudging the FDA along.
Dave Kemp:
Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, I think that you’re right with regard to the fact that it seems to be something that is still a focus, and even might be something that’s top of mind for Biden himself. And I just think that that’s definitely positive, but to your point, I found it to be just really disappointing in the way that, like you said, that they were almost scapegoating the hearing professional, which, as somebody that… it’s interesting when you read these things and you actually have a deep knowledge of what they’re writing about, and you then see like, wow, this is, there’s so much negativity, so much just blatant misinformation in here, citing just all of the different information.
Dave Kemp:
A lot of it was confusing, conflicting to previous reports. So, that was really frustrating. And I think that you had a really good thread on this, where you made a couple of key points, and I wanted to give you a chance to outline these, basically take the conversation from Twitter and move it into the podcast so that many others can hear a lot of these great points that you’re making. So, do you want to share what some of your takeaways were from this, and then we can use that as a jumping point into some specific topics?
Andy Bellavia:
Yeah, certainly. And I think they’re really a couple of different things. One is, they scapegoated the hearing aid providers by simply saying that the average cost of a hearing aid is too high, and they threw audiologists under a bus by implying that they are nothing more than a cost adder that you don’t need once you have a device, you can go to the store and buy. And I’ve been thinking a lot about this price discussion, because it’s obviously a hot topic right now when people say, “Hearing aid prices are too high.” But you think about what a hearing aid is today, I mean, and compared to a consumer hearable device, my hearing aids are half the size of any hearable that you can buy.
Andy Bellavia:
The batteries, they’re rechargeable version, the batteries go all day long. If you get the replaceable battery version, they go for three or five or seven days. And they’re super comfortable, I mean, three years further in, I’m still jumping in the shower wearing them if I shower in the afternoon because I totally forget they’re there. And as a hearing device, they’re pretty amazing actually. And the total hearing aids sold globally are something like 17 or eight million units. And you have that split up amongst five major companies, and I’ll pass all those smaller ones.
Andy Bellavia:
So, you’re developing these custom DSPs but only spreading the cost of that development across a very small quantity. For a typical hearing aid company, it’s only going to be a few million units, which is a far different animal than, say, for example, Apple developing their custom chip and then being able to spread it across 50 million or more annual sales. So, the cost basis of developing a hearing aid is complete different than a hear all device. And I’ll actually go, I mean, this is a theoretical point, if you will, but I have here GN’s annual report, and I took the 2019 annual report. So, we could go pre-pandemic.
Andy Bellavia:
And they break out their hearing division and their audio division. Of course, their hearing division is the ReSound hearing aids, and the audio division is their professional and communications headsets, the Jabra Elite series, to wireless earphones and alike. And their operating profit margin for the hearing division in 2019 was 20%, 20.2. Their operating margin for the audio division was 19.2. So, basically, they’re making the same margin on the hearing aid division as they are on their other audio products.
Andy Bellavia:
So, clearly, they are not pillaging by the price of the hearing aids. I mean, it’s a going reasonably profitable business just like their audio group is, but no higher, right? It quite simply just costs more to develop a hearing aid and produce it. And so, the hearing aid companies are not getting fabulously wealthy off of hearing aid sales, it’s just normal comparing to other in-ear audio products. But then who’s making all the money? I mean, I look at my audiologist, she’s not driving a Bentley or anything like that, because, I mean, she’s not making under-margin, she’s making the margin of a professional person, and really, no more.
Andy Bellavia:
I mean, it costs money to operate a private practice. If you’re a audiological practice in a big box store, you could spread the cost a little bit differently being within the big box store than you can as a private practice, but my audiologist isn’t making a ton of money. I think what’s happened there, and if people in audiological community want to accuse me of drifting too far out of my lane, I’m fine with that, these are only my personal thoughts, is that, because in U.S., hearing aids and the services, the audiological service, are not covered by insurance, audiologists and other hearing care professionals were more or less boxed in to recovering the cost of their services in the price for the hearing aid.
Andy Bellavia:
Now, pre all this discussion about hearables and OTC, yes, an audiological practice could have unbundled and broken out all their services, but it’s really just a lot easier and probably made more sense to the customer to just bake it all into the hearing aid price. And so, nobody’s making a whole lot of money here, but that’s the system that was developed. And now, because you have OTC and all the rest, that model is going to have to change in some way, and obviously, there’s a lot of discussion within the audiology community on exactly how that has to happen.
Andy Bellavia:
I personally feel it’s an opportunity to be more holistic in service providing, and I was thinking about this, and I’m listening to one of my favorite radio stations, which you’ll recognize, WXRT, and there’s always one of the clinics who deals with sleep apnea. And they come on and they say, “If you go over here, you’re going to walk out of there with a CPAP mask.” But you may not need a CPAP mask. And just like a hearing aid, nobody wants to wear a bloody CPAP mask, right? Do I want to put a mask on my face and go to bed? No. And so, their pitch actually is, “If you’re having sleep problems, come see us, and we’ll custom evaluate and find a solution that works for you.” If it’s not a mask, we’re not going to put one on you.” That’s kind of their pitch.
Andy Bellavia:
And I could see audiologists pitching the same thing, “Regardless of your hearing situation, we’ve got an answer for you. It isn’t always necessarily a classical hearing aid depending on where you’re at, but we have an answer for you.” And so, that’s how the model may end up going further. But when I read the presidential report in there saying the cost of a hearing aid is too high, and the audiologists are doing nothing more than adding extra cost to the whole delivery system, I have to push back against both of those. I think the main thing really is, it’s not that hearing aid cost is too high, if you’re profoundly hearing impaired or under review, the serious and above, you need one of those devices, right?
Andy Bellavia:
You need a medical grade device, and you need a professional to fit it for you. The issue is, is that not everybody needs that, there are people early in their journey who can use a lower cost solution. And that’s what the OTC legislation was meant to address. It’s not meant to throw hearing aid providers and audiologists under the bus and just give a blanket statement that costs are too high, people should be able to buy hearing aid at a big box store, which is really what they said.
Dave Kemp:
Right. I completely agree, and I think that the… to your point too, I think that what’s exciting is that you’re going to have a lot of… In the span of when the whole Obama PCAST report was issued, that was, I guess, at least 2015, so, it’s been six years since this has been a directive from the government of like, “We need to do something about the cost and the overall expenditure of hearing healthcare.” And so, the solution has been like, “We’re going to introduce these over-the-counter hearing aids.” And what’s fascinating, in my opinion, is that over the course of those six years, technology has actually almost rendered this whole thing moot.
Dave Kemp:
And what I mean by that is, everything that we’re seeing happen right now in the consumer audio space is so emblematic of, call it Moore’s Law, or just call it like just the inevitability of these devices getting a little bit smaller, a little bit more capable, a little bit more powerful each and every year, to the point to where, here we are in 2021, and you have ear buds that can function just like a hearing aid, in some sense, I’m not suggesting that these are going to be replacements, but even having a rudimentary offering, where it’s like, it’s just, I think, it shows sort of the blind spot of the government a little bit, and just of this idea of like, we need to have this intervention, when a lot of the time, technology just works itself out.
Dave Kemp:
I mean, a lot of what is being cited as issues are actually being inherently navigated by a lot of these really interesting sort of startups or some of the big incumbents that are now putting a focus on this. I talked, and maybe this is a good jumping off point to talk through when I had the conversation with Brian Taylor on the last episode, you had a great Twitter thread. Again, you’ll hear Andy and I always mention Twitter threads and stuff, we both spent a lot of time on Twitter, probably too much time, but there are so many interesting conversations that happen on there, it’s such a great place, and Andy is a really, a big advocate of this himself.
Dave Kemp:
And so, after that episode, he shared a lot of his sort of takeaways, and I think you fixated a little bit on the portion of that conversation where we talked about price, stigma, and what we called friction or access to hearing care, as being the three roots of low hearing solution adoption. And I thought maybe this will be a good way to segue back into that now. So, as I was describing there with the whole OTC regulations, here we are in 2021, you can actually make a case as to why the technology itself is working itself out to solve all three of those things in different ways.
Dave Kemp:
You had just gone and done a detailed breakdown of price, but I think that we could talk about how you now have these low cost earbuds that are going to have really exciting technology baked into them, because that’s just the trajectory of these new capabilities is that they’re now being licensed by, whether it’s Jacoti, now you have the company, Alango, who does the BeHear solution, so, another one of these companies that has its own hardware, but the real, the root of its value is in its software, and so now they’re going to license this out. So, you’re going to see the specialty device manufacturers that have this great technology start to really license their software, and it’s going to increase the foothold or the footprint of these devices dramatically.
Dave Kemp:
And so, I wanted to kick it back over to you and just get your thoughts on this, of like, does OTC even really matter that much anymore when you have things that aren’t necessarily called hearing aids, that function, a whole lot like what the OTC act was intended to solve all along? It seems almost like we’re already solving these things, and do we even need this?
Andy Bellavia:
Yeah, I want to start with the discussion you had with Brian Taylor on, it was three things that cause people to… adoption rates on hearing aids to be low, and it’s cost, and stigma, and friction. And addressing only cost makes no sense because even in countries or areas of the world where hearing aids are covered by insurance, adoption rates are still very low. So, cost is clearly not the only driver. Yeah, and we talked about cost already, but a part of it also is, what will the U.S. regulatory environment look like? Will OTC be mute moot or not? Because it depends on what the FDA does.
Andy Bellavia:
Right now, the FDA has allowed a Wild West to form. You have classic hearing aids, but because they waived the pre-market requirement, roughly quoted, if your device is very similar to an existing one. Well, lots of people are taking advantage of that. So, it’s a giant loophole that everybody’s driving through. There’re legitimate companies trying to be OTC devices, who are doing the NAL-NL2 fitting algorithm and all the rest, and then there are a lot of shady players driving into that open space as well. And the promise of OTC is that they’re going to start to carve out classic hearing aids, OTC devices and PSAPs, and especially a delineation between OTC and PSAP.
Andy Bellavia:
And if they really do that then and enforce those, that dividing line, then OTC won’t be moot. So, in other words, if anything above X amplification has to be classified as an OTC and tested, and they then enforce people who cross that line without getting tested, then there is a place for OTC within the U.S. environment, right? So, it won’t be moot. And the other thing about OTC is, is that as insurance coverage increases, and right now, it’s happening in fits and starts, and if it ever happens across the U.S., you may find OTC being prescribed for people with mild to moderate hearing loss. And then you actually will need that regulated category, because that would be eligible insurance, versus a PSAP, which is just a consumer device with no regulation, would not be covered by insurance. So, we have to see how the FDA actually acts as they release the OTC.
Andy Bellavia:
But, yeah, when it comes to all three, ultimately, I think the problem with today’s environment is that you have an all-or-nothing proposition. And to get a hearing aid today is a fairly high friction environment. And if I think of my own experience, which is not atypical, and I’ve heard a lot of people describe it, I went and got the medical check for mini-ENT first, and I know, technically, I could have waived it, but I wanted to have that done, then I went to the audiologist, I had the first measurements, then I went back for a fitting, and then, after the first fitting, I couldn’t take the amplification all at once, so, she had to turn it down for me.
Andy Bellavia:
And then once I got used to them, I went back, she turned them up. And then as I started to gain more experience, I needed a couple more tuning tweaks, so then we’re allowed to Trax. And for me personally, traveling, working hard, had other activities going, the friction was the thing that kept me waiting longer than ever. It was like, at what did it get bad enough where I was willing to carve out all that time to make it happen? The cost is always there. Even if you can afford it, you’re always thinking, “Well, it’s not that bad.” It’s like your car, if your car, something minor goes wrong where you’re like, “I don’t have to fix it right now.” That sort of thing.
Andy Bellavia:
Well, because of that, I see people making the decision, “Well, I’ve got to repair this thing in my house,” or it’s, “Do this or buy the hearing aids,” and so, it’s easy to rationalize with yourself that, “I don’t need one just yet, I can push it off, I can push it off, I can push it off.” And of course then there’s the stigma factor, which wasn’t a factor in my case. I’m actually on the younger end of hearing aid wearers anyway, and so, I didn’t see that as a sign of my getting older, I saw it as a sign of me being stupid when I was younger and going to too many live concerts without hearing protection and turning the headphones up too loud or all that, right? But I totally get the stigma portion.
Andy Bellavia:
I could see somebody who’s, say, older than I am, their health is starting to fail, and next thing you know, you’ve got family members telling you, “Yeah, you can’t hear anymore, go get a hearing aid,” especially in the context of their greater life. You think of an older person, a family member might say to them, “You shouldn’t be doing that anymore. At your age, let me get you some help for that sort of thing.” So, already, they’re starting to feel like, getting uncomfortable with the aging process. And then to be told, “You should get a hearing aid,” it’s just another kick in the teeth.
Andy Bellavia:
And it’s all because there’s an all-or-nothing proposition here. There’s no way to gradually go into it. I’m a distance runner. If you look at my training shoes today, they’ve got more cushion in them and more stability than the ones I used to run in a ton in 20 years ago, just trying to keep something from breaking when I go pound out the miles, right? You make those accommodations. And you can do those gradually. A lot of people age very gracefully, right? They just make the adjustments little by little as they go. In hearing, you can’t do that. It’s all or nothing today. You have to bite the bullet and go for the big process. And therefore, people wait until it’s really, really necessary to do.
Andy Bellavia:
But in this OTC kind of future, and even hearable future, when you are just starting to notice, “I’m having problems in a crowded restaurant but I’m still fine hearing in a home environment,” you can gradually start to adopt solutions. You can use the concept of hearing improvement, you can do it in a lower friction way and you become more comfortable at the whole process and you just simply go up the ladder in stages as you need them. And should you then come to the point where you really need a hearing aid because now you can’t hear even in a quiet environment, you’re just ready to go get one. It’s only the next stage of a journey, you’ve taken two or three stages already.
Andy Bellavia:
And I think that’s really the value of OTC and hearable devices, is that you have something for every stage of the journey, you have a gradual way of working your way into hearing assistance and enhancement, and therefore, people will adopt all levels sooner and more comfortably than they do today.
Dave Kemp:
Yeah. Wow. Really, really well said. I love a lot of the different analogies that you use, whether it be the running shoes, or just the fact that when you get older, it is like, I think a big part of the stigma isn’t even necessarily like the connotation with the devices as much as it’s this reminder that you’re getting older, and that it’s this constant reminder of that. So, there’re serious emotional, psychological elements to this. And I completely agree, I mean, the name of the last episode was, The Upside of Optionality, and we talked a lot about this idea of hearing aids being packaged in hearable form factors is, I think, a really net benefit, because, again, it just, it doesn’t necessarily matter to every single person, a lot of people will just yawn and say, “That’s not for me,” and they want the hearing aid.
Dave Kemp:
But for some people, that might actually be the straw that breaks the camel’s back to actually force them to go and get some treatment, because they’re like, “All right, now that alleviates part of the stigma, part of my own personal equation.” And so, I think you’re right when you say that a lot of this is, it has historically been an all-or-nothing approach. And so, now as we move into more optionality, I think that’s going to be a really good thing. But I think that this whole idea that a lower cost hearing aid is the solution, it, again, you have to look at it through this lens of it’s like, this is a three-fold equation.
Dave Kemp:
And I would actually add another one, I would say that the quality of the fit or the quality of the experience is up there too, because you might, I’ll use my future father-in-law, for example, he went back a while ago, and apparently, he was fit with Sam’s hearing aids, and they’re, he’s the quintessential example of like, wore them a few times, horrible sounding, put them in the drawer, never wore them again. And now he thinks like, “These things aren’t for me.” Little does he know that his future son-in-law has a hearing aid podcast, so, I’m not going to let that fly. But anyway, I think that it speaks to this idea though that it is like, it’s so multifaceted.
Dave Kemp:
And so, you have to think about these things, where it’s like, okay, so, if the solution here is, we’re going to just make hearing aids cheaper, that actually doesn’t really solve the issue, again, because it’s this, if you look at it through the lens of this multi-fold thing, then you would say that in the UK, for example, where under the NHS, you can get hearing aids for free, why are their penetration rates just as low as ours? And it’s probably because there’s a lot more that goes into it than just the cost. The cost plays a big role, it’s a serious attractor for many, but in today’s day and age, you can go to Costco and you can get hearing aids that are fit using really your measurement because it’s mandated inside of the Costco stores top-down, and their devices are pretty good.
Dave Kemp:
So, it’s like, there are lots of things that would indicate that, shouldn’t the penetration rate be going up then? And it’s like, again, it goes to this whole notion of the people that have the, call it the $3,000 problem or the $2,000 problem, those are candidates for hearing aids. What we haven’t really seen before is the guy with the $300 problem that’s not really… he might be Andy from eight years ago at that onset of like, “Okay, I think I probably want to do a little bit of something, but I’m not going to go get a hearing aid, whether it’s, I’m going to go get something that’s an OTC, do-it-yourself product, or it’s going to be a premium level device that I get through an audiologist,” you’re just not a candidate for that type of solution.
Dave Kemp:
But what you might be a candidate for is if, a good segue into what we’ll talk about next, you have Skullcandy Headphones and they have Bragi OS that’s being embedded in there, and it has Mimi, the ability to have some hearing augmentation, so, it’s your consumer audio headphones that you wear, or it’s your AirPods Pro that you now turn conversational boost on here and there when you want the boost, that’s the introductory element of this, and that, to me, is why everything that’s happening on the hearable side is so much more interesting, granted I think that the OTC stuff is important, I don’t mean to suggest that it’s completely irrelevant and moot, but I think that it doesn’t, again, it’s just, it’s very narrow minded in terms of the way that it’s approaching the bigger problem, which is, there’re so many other factors that are causing people to not seek any kind of solution.
Andy Bellavia:
Oh, I completely agree. In fact, the cost to try hearing enhancement is actually as low as zero, because if I already own an AirPods Pro, the first thing I might do if I have trouble hearing in a loud restaurant is flip on the directional mics, the conversation booster. And if that works for me, I’ll just start using it when I’m sitting across the table from someone in a restaurant. And now, all of a sudden, I’m starting to enter the hearing world, and it didn’t cost me a dime.
Dave Kemp:
Right. Well, it cost you the pair of your headphones, but you didn’t buy the headphones for that feature.
Andy Bellavia:
Yeah, right. Exactly. I might’ve owned them for a year, now with the new OS, I can put conversation booster on. So, the cost to try at the lower end is getting lower and lower, and as you mentioned, now you also have the option of doing something else, you’ve got licensing model starting to appear. Jacoti is a licensing software, for example, and you now have examples like Bragi OS, where you can actually go to an app store and buy features. And you also have hearing solutions which are completely out of the regulatory amplification system all together. If I think about what Chatable is doing, which is extracting speech from noise with zero amplification, it’s a completely different beast altogether rather than classic amplification and hearing test, and yet that for…
Andy Bellavia:
Actually, I just thought of the conversation you had with Brian Edwards, because when he broke down the MarkeTrak report, he talked about that sea of people who don’t measure as having hearing loss, and yet have hearing difficulty in certain situations. So, those people don’t necessarily even need amplification. And so, now you’ve got a completely different method of hearing enhancement that can address that end of the market as well, just simply help reduce the noise, and give more of the speech, and you’ve now improved the lives of those people without a classic hearing aid. So, there’s lots of options coming now.
Andy Bellavia:
And as you’ve pointed out multiple times, is that as the chipsets and hearables get better, as the ability to obtain, purchase different apps and low dementia hearable devices is increasing, it’s going to be amazing what solutions are available to people. And I mean viable solutions, not junk, but solutions that really help people at different levels of hearing.
Dave Kemp:
Right. I mean, that’s, it’s like you said, not junk, that’s what’s really interesting and that’s happening now, is like, a lot of the people in the hearing health industry, they’re almost a little jaded to what’s coming because of what’s come before, because there was a lot of junk and there were a lot of bad actors that were preying on the, kind of like a lot of what were these detractors, namely, price. Low cost, as low as X, and it’s like, it creates this perception that the solution here is that you’re going to be able to get the same thing that you would through the premium channel. It’s like, you’ve solved it because you’re savvy.
Dave Kemp:
And what’s exciting though is that the technology, the underlying technology really has matured to enable this at scale. And I think Bragi OS is such a good example of like the representation of what’s coming, because I think that, going back to the conversation you and I had with Nikolai of Bragi back, I don’t remember when that was, I think it was about last year, and it was really fascinating what he said. He said, “We didn’t actually ever really set out to make hardware, what we did is, we needed a proof of concept basically.” And that proof of concept was for Bragi, Bragi OS.
Dave Kemp:
And so, they made The Dash, and then they eventually pivoted to software. And it’s like, okay, they went incognito for a period of time, and now they’ve come back and they have partnerships with Skullcandy, they have partnerships with Mimi, with Audioburst being a company that aggregates a lot of audio content. And it’s this idea that he outlined, which is, eventually, your hearables will have apps. And it was a little bit vague at the time of what that meant, but now it’s becoming really clear, which is, again, you take those three partnerships, okay, so, you have the hardware, you have Skullcandy which is the largest OEM of sub $100 headphones. You have Mimi, which is one of these sort of app-based online hearing profiles. You take a test and it creates your own profile, it creates you ear print, if you will.
Dave Kemp:
And then you have Audioburst, which is a very specific use case, with these Skullcandy headphones that are operating with Bragi OS, that have the hearing augmentation built in so that it has an element of hearing enhancement, hearing augmentation, and then you have specific content-based apps so that it aggregates different podcast clips. Audioburst is a really interesting company, I need to actually do a full-blown podcast on it so I can flesh out exactly what this thing is, because I’m telling you, it’s another really interesting use case. But all of this culminates into the same thing, which is, we now are almost into a future where we have $100 headphones that are operating with something like this, like a little operating system, that has lots of specific apps for it.
Dave Kemp:
And just follow this out across the next five years, you can imagine that it’s, A, it’s going to proliferate massively. You’re going to have all kinds of little devices that are so much more sophisticated than even a few years ago, that have their own specific apps that are running. A lot of it is probably going to be done on Edge, so, it will help to alleviate some of the battery concerns. It will, instead of a lot of the stuff being processed in the cloud, a lot of it might actually be processed on device. Think of voice assistants, being able to do that offline. There’s just a lot of tantalizing options that are starting to come into the fold, and I think like, this is what’s been so exciting as you could see this coming from a mile away a few years ago, but you didn’t really know how it was actually going to arise.
Dave Kemp:
You could see the pieces that were assembled on the horizon, but now, it’s like, “Okay, here we are, and we’re entering into this.” And for me, that’s what’s so much more exciting about the state of things, isn’t some regulatory new guideline that’s going to basically introduce a new element into the market, that’s going to happen, and it’s probably going to have somewhat of an impact, but what’s going to have, I think, a much bigger impact is just the free market itself working itself out, and people having, like you said, all kinds of new devices that have an element of this. And it’s going to be that exposure piece across the next few years.
Dave Kemp:
I guarantee you, I would put money on it that what we’re really going to see, the biggest change in hearing health over the next two to three years is going to just be a exponential increase in the amount of exposure that people have toward their own hearing loss, toward understanding where they fit in on the spectrum, and now be able to just go, it’s like you said, the all-or-nothing sort of model is getting broken down into, now you’re going to have hearing aids that sit on the high end of the sophistication ladder, but then you have a whole lot of things that fall beneath that that are either situational, they’re app based.
Dave Kemp:
They might not even be amplification based, they might be more like machine learning, extracting speech from noise, throwing a lot of AI at the problem. It’s just like, the ways in which you’re combating this is increasing tenfold in the form factors and just all the different techniques, and that’s what’s so exciting to me, is like, we suddenly went almost seemingly overnight from this all-or-nothing model to what soon will be just a sea of options. And that’s ultimately where I think the provider really stands to fit in is, the complexity is going way up, so, there’s going to need to be an expert to help to at least present people with their options. And that’s where I’ve always thought that in this newer model, that’s where the hearing professional really fits in, in my opinion.
Andy Bellavia:
Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, I’m in this business, so, I can sort this out, but an ordinary person, how are they going to sort it out? When they’re going to spend their three or $500 on a device, how are they going to know which is the right one? It’s worth a consult with a hearing professional to go get that sorted out then, and then you can imagine assistant sitting down and helping them select a right ear tips and running the tuning app on it or whatever. I absolutely think it’s an opportunity to make a hearing practice more holistic across the whole range, because, I mean, people who need the full hearing aid, they’re going to get a full hearing aid anyway. The people who can use a situational device avoid getting hearing aid.
Andy Bellavia:
So, I don’t see this reducing the sales of full hearing aids, I actually see it increasing and really improve the uptake.
Andy Bellavia:
And yeah, the thing, you mentioned it earlier, that I always tend to bring up, I can never do one of these without bringing it up, is, all of this happening here in the U.S. over OTC and all the rest of it, I really hope is then going to drive the scale necessary to take hearing solutions globally, to places where there aren’t audiologists, to places where incomes are lower, and so, cost really isn’t an issue. And you already see people moving in that direction already, trying to support that market in different ways. But, I mean, really on global basis, what’s the whole figure? 500 million people with hearing impairment sufficient enough to affect their lifestyle? It’s a lot of people, and most of them are not being served.
Andy Bellavia:
So, as we drive these solutions here in the U.S. and in other Western countries, I really hope that provides a scale and take it global.
Dave Kemp:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I think that this obviously as a American-based podcast with typically… well, actually, I have a fair range of international guests, so, we do get a good perspective from others as it relates to this point, but I completely agree. I mean, again, that’s why it’s almost like as an insider that really understands what’s happening. That’s why I almost yawn a little bit at the OTC stuff, because I don’t think it’s the much bigger thing that’s happening, I think that it’s getting all the attention, and a lot of it is because of the way that it’s worded and a lot of the inflammatory rhetoric that it creates around, like, are there these cabals of audiologists that are price gouging? No.
Dave Kemp:
And so, of course, that’s generating a lot of the buzz right now, but I think that what we’ll see over the next few years is that the technology itself is going to be the much bigger story and will have the much bigger impact. And so, I think that’s what’s so exciting to me is that a lot of this stuff is going to just render a lot of the OTC stuff a little bit obsolete, because, again, I think Chatable is a great example of this, where it’s like, okay, so, how do you define that? It’s, there’s no augmentation, I mean, there’s no amplification, it’s machine learning and calm and extraction of data, more or less, and then real time processing that’s basically just a huge layer of AI.
Dave Kemp:
And so, you now, you’ve put that into something like Noopl, and so, you’re now left with a solution that exists, that is AirPods plus Noopl equals great cocktail party, the cocktail situation that’s usually described as one of the most challenging things, where lots of different speakers, lots of background noises, so, it’s like, what’s the solution for that? And again, I know that I’m harping on this a lot, but that’s where I think the, especially in the U.S., it’s like you said, the people that need hearing aids will get hearing aids. I do not think that part of the market is going to change all that much, I think that that’s the market that’s always been addressed.
Dave Kemp:
But there’s been this huge portion that’s been largely neglected, and a lot of that is just because I don’t think that we have had the technology, the underlying technology in place to create the solutions necessary to appeal to all three of the big detractors in a sufficient way. You now have devices that look really cool, you have the behavioral change that was ushered in by Apple that I talk about all the time with AirPods, you have basically the economies of scale, the peace dividends of the smartphone war. So, you have 15 years basically worth of economies of scale of all the little components that go into the devices that it just keeps driving the cost down for all these different things.
Dave Kemp:
And so, the net result is, we live in a world now where it’s like, it’s highly normalized to wear things that look like earbuds in your ears for long periods of time. That’s a huge thing that’s happened that was a necessary thing in order to alleviate sort of the stigma element of this, getting people comfortable with this idea of wearing these things. And like I said, all of the peace dividends of the smartphone war, the Chris Anderson thing, that’s been a huge, significant reduction in the cost of driving the cost down and making more affordable solutions. And then you have the avenue in the friction element of this.
Dave Kemp:
So, you have the ability to open, buy something in DDC online, and you can then program it yourself, and you can be basically self-programming something that works really well, again, for these milder losses. Again, put yourself in the shoes of somebody that lives in Sub-Saharan Africa, where now they are starting to have Android proliferation of their smartphones. So, you give them something that can connect in parent to that, that’s much more affordable. Now we actually have something that can combat hearing loss in parts of the world that we’ve never been able to before, because the legacy solution was this all-or-nothing approach.
Dave Kemp:
And so, that’s what’s so exciting to me is, it’s like, each of these three things is systematically being broken down, and I think that now the time is right for the solutions to present themselves as the introductory type things, the things that they won’t appeal to everybody, a lot of people will want to go the hearing aid route, or they’ll just continue to just get by the way that they are, but being able to have things that are available to people. And I think again and go back to the whole Kim Cavitt thing that you mentioned on the podcast about the role of the audiologist or the professional is like that of a navigator. The patient’s the captain, they’re going to be the one that ultimately decides whether or not they pursue whatever you recommend, whether they’re actually going to wear the device or they’re going to put it in the drawer.
Dave Kemp:
So, the best that you can do is to at least give them their options and let them know what exists. And that’s, I think, what’s so exciting is like, it seems as if almost every week, a new element of this comes into the fold where it’s like, that’s just one more thing to add to your arsenal of solutions that you can present to people.
Andy Bellavia:
Oh, and I love that navigator analogy. If you think even today, when a ship sails into a difficult harbor, what do they do? They take a pilot on board who guides them through. Right? And that’s exactly it. I just, I totally love that analogy because the technology is just racing ahead. It’s both, the technology racing ahead means that people in this industry have to confront and adopt it, and can’t hide from it, but it also opens up a world of opportunities for people to be navigators and pilots. So, no, I really like that analogy that came out.
Andy Bellavia:
And I’m going to read something for you just to show you how quickly things are moving along. I caught this a few weeks ago, it’s actually a press release from a company called AIStorm, and they’re doing an analog neural network on chip, low power, low latency. Right? Think about this, and they signed an agreement with Knowles a few weeks ago. And here’s the summary, “AIStorm technical partnership announcement with Knowles Corp for AI-in-Sensor real-time audio processing TWS MEMS.” In other words, the possibility of putting a neural network doing audio processing at high level in a microphone.
Andy Bellavia:
And so, now you imagine a device, and this could be a hearing aid too, yeah, I’m just kind of extrapolating here, but imagine whether it’s a consumer device or a hearing aid where you are doing that speech from noise extraction before it ever leaves the microphone. Right? So, I mean, this is just all racing ahead, what Bragi is doing, what AIStorm and Knowles is doing, what Chatable and Jacoti are doing. I mean, it is just racing along, and we’re going to need more pilots to help the consumer navigate these waters.
Dave Kemp:
Yeah, no, totally. I mean, that’s the thing, is it’s going to probably continue to increase in its speed too, because, again, it’s like, all of the pieces are really there now to start to assemble these things in lots of creative, different ways. MEMS are a great example. When I first met you, I didn’t really understand what MEMS were, and I think that’s a great example of like the type of components that we talk a lot about in this hearables world that are very unique, like, I guess, let’s pull up here and just, why don’t you give a quick breakdown of what exactly MEMS microphones are, and then what that is allowing for from, compared to just like traditional legacy microphones, like computerized microphones, if you will?
Andy Bellavia:
Yeah. So, the original idea behind a MEMS microphone, well, MEMS in general are mechanical devices that are made with processes similar to computer chips. And so, you’re basically etching out micro-mechanical devices. And MEMS exist in all different kinds. There’re little small MEMS pumps that can do in the body, in medical injection, all different kinds of things. And Knowles actually invented the MEMS microphone originally for mobile phones. They would be smaller than the typical microphone in a mobile phone in the old days. And now, their application has proliferated as well. They’re becoming more and more popular in hearing aids because they’re smaller and the performance is very high.
Andy Bellavia:
We have a specialty line for hearing aids with very low power consumption and very high performance, to meet the particular age of hearing aids. Well, and they were still just dumb microphones. But now, because semiconductor technology is getting more and more miniaturized and more and more powerful, we’re starting to put intelligence right in the microphone. So, we can do a voice wake within a microphone, for example. And that’s only going to increase because when you can do things, when you can do higher and higher level processing right within the microphone, it’s a low power and very low latency. And so, that’s the driving force behind that.
Andy Bellavia:
You see it in IoT products, for example. You can have an intelligent microphone that’ll do basic controls for a microwave oven, for example, all on the Edge. But in this particular case, it gets to the point where we can actually build an AI neural network in a microphone, you can do all kinds of interesting processing within the microphone. And if you take a hearing aid case, if you’ve already cleaned up the audio to get the voices extracted from the noise before you do the classic hearing aid processing and amplification, it’s going to make a hearing aid a lot more powerful, or a hearable device running in restaurant mode, for example.
Andy Bellavia:
So, we’ll see where all this goes, this is a new relationship, but it just points to how quickly things are steaming along in terms of the intelligence you can pack into an in-ear device. It’s going to make all devices, whether hearables or hearing aids, more powerful as these technologies move along.
Dave Kemp:
Yeah, I think it’s like, you listen to this stuff, and as like two audio nerds, I think that we really appreciate it, but I think that a lot of people, it’s, their eyes gloss over a little bit, but the end result is something that I think we all can appreciate, which is, these are the driving forces behind why these things continue to just become more sophisticated and more capable. It’s like, that’s the real underlying reason why we have devices that can do the things that they can do, and it’s setting the stage for all the things that they’ll be able to do next, which brings me to the last thing I wanted to talk about today, you are the biggest proponent I know of what we refer to as voice first hearing aids.
Dave Kemp:
For those of you that aren’t familiar, voice first is like a Twitter kind of a jargony thing that was made popular by the Voice Community. And really what it implies is like this idea that you can use all kinds of different voice features as almost like the voice as the user interface for these devices. And one of the things that Andy and I connected early on with was really this idea that like, at a certain point where you have these two sort of disparate technology sets that are taking place, so, you have all the things that are happening with voice, and you have all this stuff that’s happening with hearables, the way that they’ll ultimately meet in the middle is that the voice will be the main controller of your technology, and it will be housed in your hearables.
Dave Kemp:
And so, it’s like, today, you see it with Siri in AirPods, or you could be like Andy, he wears his Phonak Marvels and he has Google Assistant that’s, it’s really, it’s tethered to his phone, but he can communicate with it at your level. And I thought what was so interesting, what I wanted to talk about here was, I was watching some of those videos that Nikolai posted from Bragi’s YouTube channel, where he’s interviewing the CEO of Skullcandy. He’s interviewing Amir Hirsh, who’s the CEO at Audioburst. He was talking about this with Mimi, with the CEO there, and every single conversation, they had an element where they were talking about voice.
Dave Kemp:
And I just found this to be so interesting because clearly, Bragi with Bragi OS is a very integral part, I think, of where a lot of hearables will move, whether it be Bragi itself with Bragi OS, or a competitor, a different OS, or Apple with iOS, it’s like, we’re very quickly moving in this direction where you’re going to have some sort of operating system baked into that. And these companies and these executives are thinking very far ahead, and all of them are coming to the same consensus, which is like, voice is going to be at the heart of the future of these devices, because it just stands to be that you’ll have this scenario where more and more, you will be less dependent on your phone in the screen, because you will be able to have this alternative, if you choose.
Dave Kemp:
Some people, obviously, are going to continue to use the legacy modality of just their phone, but I think it’s like this vision of it being something where you really can control your app economy. In the same way that you do through tap, touch, and swipe, you’ll just be able to do it with your voice and all the different use cases that we’ve talked about before. But I just wanted to get your thoughts as we close here about, as somebody that’s already living in this future that they’re describing, do you agree with me that it’s just really, really interesting that all of these people seem to be recognizing that this is like one of the core use cases of hearables into the future?
Dave Kemp:
And how do you think that ultimately will impact both the hearables in the voice ecosystem, knowing that the people that seem to be the most influential, if you will, or at least have a serious amount of influence, are almost steering it into this convergence?
Andy Bellavia:
Yeah, you make a good point that now you see influential people moving this way. And it’s part of the hearing aids convergence too, because as more people wear in-ear devices for longer periods of time, they’re looking for the extended use cases. Okay? Right now, it’s, audio consumption is the primary use case. But that’s going to start as people wear them for longer and longer, other use cases are going to come to the fore as well, like hearing enhancement situationally, okay? Or full-blown hearing aid if you need a full-blown hearing aid. And so, the minute you start wearing this in-ear device for longer and longer periods of time, then you really open up opportunities for voice to play a more prominent role.
Andy Bellavia:
I mean, I’ll give you one example. In a couple of weeks, we’re going to my wife’s family in Madison, Wisconsin, which is about 90 minutes from our house, and I need to get 16 miles in for training. So, I preloaded a route into Google Maps, and when I’m there, I’m going to get up early Saturday morning and I’m just going to hit the gold button and I’m going to get the recited voice instructions in my ears for a route I don’t even know. It just tells me to turn right and turn left, and I’m pretty confident, 16 miles later, I’m going to show up where I started. And that’s sort of navigation by voice. You can be on a city street, you’re all hearing the cars around you and talking to the person next to you, and getting directions recited in your ear very naturally. All right?
Andy Bellavia:
Or you can stop in front of a restaurant, then you can ask for reviews of the place. People are going to start more and more to be comfortable with using voice for these things. And as that adoption grows, then you’re going to see more opportunity to monetize voice experiences when you’re wearing hearing devices. Plus, of course, the local control element, I mean, that’s part of the Bragi announcement. They said, you’ll be able to do all the earphone control locally without having to go to the cloud and back just to turn the volume up and down, or skip to the next track or that sort of thing, it’ll all be handled locally and very seamlessly. So, it gives you a pretty good listening experience hands-free as well.
Andy Bellavia:
And more and more people are going to start adopting voice for these purposes since they’re wearing things in their ears more and more often anyway. So, no, it’s a very exciting part of the convergence. And it goes the other way too. People are listening to music or podcasts or navigation more often than if they have the hearable devices in their ears anyway. I think they’re going to start to adopt the hearing features with greater frequency and get that exposure to the world of hearing enhancement earlier in their hearing journey. So, the convergence, I think, really works to people’s advantage in both directions. That’s pretty exciting stuff.
Dave Kemp:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more, and I agree with you too, where it’s like this idea of, all of this is so intertwined because it’s all… the big common theme is, like you said, this incentive to be wearing something in and around your ears for longer periods of time. I saw on Spotify, my Spotify app, just recently, they’re doing a big push now of like, “Do you want to download that podcast here, Apple Watch.” Audible’s doing this too, where it’s this whole notion of like, do you need to take your phone out with you? It recognizes that a lot of people out there would be more than happy to leave their phone at home for that run that they’re going to go on, and just stream whatever they want to stream through their watch, or through their AirPods.
Dave Kemp:
And so, I think that it’s like, you just start to look at this and say, “Okay, is it…” Some people might say, “Well, that’s really dystopian that like you’re going to have this future where you’re wearing these things in and around your ears for long periods of time. Are we just going to be getting more and more dependent on our technology and all that?” And I think that, look around, is it more dystopian than it is now, where people are just buried in their phones? And so, I think that it’s really going to provide people with just sort of like a new alternative to the screen time. And I think that a lot of people are going to go for that, because I think, again, it’s… and a lot of people aren’t really on board with this fact that you’re spending… you have Apple now that’s actually issuing you a alert like, this is how much time you spent this week on it.
Dave Kemp:
So, clearly, they know that this is something that people are actively trying to mitigate, and I think that that’s where the hearing health side of this gets really interesting, because you have like, that, very well, might be your justification of like, “That’s why I’m going to wear my AirPods in for times when I’m not even listening to anything or I’m taking calls is because I have conversational boost on.” And will that become normalized? We’ve already gotten to the doorstep. And if that becomes normalized, will it be unusual to go into a bar and see people wearing things in their ears because they’re really mitigating the cocktail hour effect that we were talking about earlier?
Dave Kemp:
How does that actual specific use case come to fruition? Because the biggest attractor is the fact that people are in a social setting, that it’s discouraged to be wearing headphones. So, in the absence of something like a hearing aid that’s invisible, we actually have to have a cultural kind of change where it becomes normalized. And will people be on board with that? So, those are like, I think, the things that are going to be really interesting to watch over the next few years is, it seems actually more feasible than ever before. I think if you would’ve presented this like pre-AirPods, most people would be like, “Yeah, well, that’s just part of life, you either have to wear hearing aids or there’s just not a lot that’s out there for you.”
Dave Kemp:
Now it’s like, whether it’s AirPods or it’s something that looks like it, it’s just becoming a little bit more normalized to have kind of the cheaters effect, where nobody bats an eye when you pull out your cheaters to look at a menu at a restaurant. Will it become the same thing with something that resembles earbuds, that, again, going off of this whole thing of like, maybe it’s Skullcandy Headphones that you’re wearing that are running on Bragi Os, that have the Mimi profile in it, where you got something that’s like the Noopl, and you got that plugged into your phone. It’s going to be really interesting to watch. That’s where I’m particularly looking at as to like the big changes that are going to happen.
Dave Kemp:
Because we’re right there on the doorstep, and that’s where I think that things will have to probably move in a somewhat of a direction to where people actually feel comfortable doing those kinds of things.
Andy Bellavia:
Yeah, it’s funny because, I mean, I can do anything I want because it’s accepted that I wear hearing aids all day long. Right? Like, I could be listening to Pink Floyd while I’m talking to you right now, and nobody thinks twice about it, right? And my mother actually got, she has a hearing aid on one side, and she got a Signia Active because it doesn’t get hooked into the masks, which, of course, we’re wearing less frequently here in our corner of the U.S., but she got them because it was easy to work with a mask. And her audiologist actually asked her if she’d be more self-conscious with the visible thing in her ear, versus the RIC, because she wore here, a little bit down below the tips of her ears. So, you wouldn’t even see the RIC at all, but the Signia is right there in the middle.
Andy Bellavia:
And when I first saw her wearing it, I’m like, “Oh, how can my mother be cooler than me?” But the audiologist was actually concerned if she would be self-conscious about having this visible thing in her ear when she went about and socialized. So, that cultural implications are really there. I mean, I actually, I think they will be overcome-
Dave Kemp:
I do too.
Andy Bellavia:
… in that, it’s already starting to happen. In certain areas, I mean, if I go to Silicon Valley, every third person walks around with the AirPods in their ears all day anyway, whether they’re listening to or not, and people have gotten used to it. And I think that’s going to spill over, and especially as these new technologies for being able to engage and talk and get enhanced hearing in restaurants become more and more known, in popular circles, people are going to accept that you walk into a restaurant with something in your ear, it’s not because you don’t want to talk to people when you’re sitting at the table, it’s because you do want to talk to people when you’re sitting at the table. I think that cultural shift will come, but it will take a little bit of time. And it’s all of a piece with this advanced maiden hearable and hearing deck.
Dave Kemp:
Yeah, no, I think that a good way to put a bow on this conversation, this has been excellent, because I am in full agreement, it’s like, everything that we’ve talked about, I guess, I’ll call this a series, and I think it kicked off with the conversation you and Kat and I had, which was the first of these, where, whether it was with Abraham and Steve, and Kim and Jeff, and Brian, and I think I’ve had a couple others, where it’s like, we’re moving in this direction where there’s a lot of really exciting stuff that’s happening, and I think that the really big bull argument for everything is, exposure is a really good thing, and I think that we’re on the precipice of a massive amount of exposure.
Dave Kemp:
Because you’re going to see it with a lot of these legacy devices that people already own, that it’s just like you said with an update in the OS, I can now make my AirPods Pro have this element, it’s going to be all of these devices that are running on things like a Bragi OS, that have this functionality baked into it. It’s going to be, if it’s not Bragi OS, maybe it’s just going to have the licensed hearing health functionality like a Jacoti or an Alango. So, that’s what I think is really exciting, is that, in order for you to get to the point to where it becomes normalized in a restaurant or in a bar or something like that, the first thing that you’re probably going to have to have happened was, first, it had to become normalized to wear things in and around your ears, which has happened.
Dave Kemp:
And then the next thing is, people to understand that one of the features that now exist widely is this hearing augmentation, in that, when people are wearing things in their ears, it’s not that they’re being rude, they have this hearing augmentation feature turned on so that they can better hear you. So, that’s probably going to take a couple of years for that to become normalized. But the fact is, the calvary is on the way, and these devices are going to be everywhere very soon. And I don’t think people are really going to be buying them for those features, it’s going to be a nice to have, but it’s going to create a tremendous amount of exposure to this.
Dave Kemp:
And that’s where I think like, that creates this potentially cascading effect that could ultimately result in this normalization. So, with that, I think this has been a fantastic conversation. Any closing thoughts from you?
Andy Bellavia:
The only closing thought I have for you is, congratulations to you and Molly, I’m just really happy for you both, and we’ll talk again soon afterwards.
Dave Kemp:
Oh, I thought for sure you were going to say something about like the Cardinals and like how good your White Sox are, or something like that.
Andy Bellavia:
Oh, I wasn’t going to go there. I mean, even the Cubs can beat the Cardinals now. That’s really sad. Hey, we’re playing over 600 ball, but you’re still kind of in the hunt. I mean, it’s only the All-Star break, you can have a run.
Dave Kemp:
No, long time since you could say something like that, but, yeah, the Tony La Russa, White Sox folks are in the lead, and, man, they do look really good.
Andy Bellavia:
And I am going to Comiskey Park on my actual birthday, on July 18th, I shall be watching my first live baseball, and I’m going to love every moment.
Dave Kemp:
You know that you’re a true White Sox fan because you still call it Comiskey.
Andy Bellavia:
I don’t even remember what it’s called now.
Dave Kemp:
I think it’s called-
Andy Bellavia:
Guaranteed Rate Field.
Dave Kemp:
… Guaranteed Rate, yeah.
Andy Bellavia:
Sorry, I refuse to, I refuse.
Dave Kemp:
This is awesome. Well, as always, Andy, so great to have you on. We got to do more of these just one-on-one talks, we haven’t done this in a while. So, this has been excellent. Thanks, everybody, who tuned in here to the end, and we will chat with you next time. Cheers.
