ReSound

Brand Profile: ReSound Hearing Aids

GN ReSound is the flagship brand of GN Store Nord of Denmark, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of hearing aids. ReSound, founded in 1984 by hearing-aid pioneer Rodney Perkins, in 1989 introduced WDRC (wide dynamic range compression) technology that dramatically improved sound processing and has since become a standard approach for digital hearing aids. Since then it has introduced a broad range of hearing-aid solutions for all levels of hearing loss, serving customers through offices in 80 countries worldwide.

ReSound introduced its new premium flagship Alera family of hearing aids in 2010, setting new standards for wireless connectivity with external devices such as cell phones, televisions, personal amplifiers and stereos. Utilizing ReSound’s Surround Sound processing software, which captures and mixes multiple independent sound inputs, the Alera family has gotten off to a strong start powering sales of ReSound’s entire line of hearing aids.

In 2008, the “be by Resound” and “dot by Resound” hearing aids led the market in miniature, full-function digital hearing aids that are virtually invisible. And in 2003, the ReSound Air hearing aid was the world’s first open-fit hearing aid, a design concept allowing top sound quality without blocking the ear canal that quickly became a standard design in the industry.

Recent Posts About ReSound Hearing Aids

If You Were A Major Hearing Aid Company And Got A Half-Billion Dollar Windfall, What Would You Do With It?

If you were one of the world’s largest hearing-aid companies and suddenly received a half-billion dollar windfall, what would you do with it? That’s exactly the position GN Store Nord finds itself in today.

The parent of GN ReSound hearing aids and GN Netcom headsets will get 550 million Euros (approximately $530 million US) after prevailing in a long-standing civil dispute with Poland’s largest telecommunications company. In the Bloomberg News summary of the settlement, GN Store Nord executives indicated they will use the money primarily to make further investments in its ReSound hearing aid business, including potential acquisitions.

That amount of new money unleashed on a global industry that is less than $20 billion in total sales could have a major impact. But if GN ReSound just acquires another hearing-aid company, it won’t be the game-changer everyone is waiting for in a global industry that’s been stuck with less than five percent annual growth for the past decade. Here are some other areas where serious investment could get the hearing aid industry growing faster:

1. Develop More Affordable Hearing Aids: Most of the recent innovation by the global market leaders in the hearing aid business has been in the high end of the market, providing expensive features such as wireless communication to their highest paying customers. It would be great to see one of the five global leaders come up with a high-quality hearing aid for entry level users that retails for less than $1,000. Component prices are low enough to get there, but such a low price point will also require innovation and investment in the retail channel to speed up and lower the cost of fitting the hearing aids while maintaining high levels of customer service.
2. Streamline the Fitting Process: Making it faster and easier for audiologists and dispensers to fit hearing aids will enable them to serve more customers and offer lower prices, making up a lower profit margin with a higher volume of sales. Sonova’s Sona hearing aid brand is an attempt to lower stocking costs with an upgradeable product platform to accelerate the fitting process for customers with mild hearing loss, but so far it hasn’t had a huge impact on the overall market. Others are working on faster, easier and less invasive hearing tests that would provide better results than today’s lengthy procedure while lowering costs and making it easier to attract more hearing-aid users, especially at the entry level of the market. The industry could use a lot more investment in those kinds of experiments. But until they result in higher sales volumes, these experiments require long-term investment.
3. Integrate Seamlessly With Third-Party Peripherals: The major recent investments by the top hearing aid companies in wireless communication with peripherals to hook up your hearing aids with your Bluetooth phone or your TV audio have not yet delivered affordable solutions. Many of the wireless communications schemes are proprietary, locking the user into one manufacturer’s brand of hearing aids and commanding premium prices. More compatibility with industry standards and more integration with third-party peripherals and assistive listening devices will expand the market by serving more customers at more affordable prices. But it requires an investment in innovations that will lower costs, not just provide new or higher performance.

Those are only three areas where even a fraction of a half-billion-dollar investment could be a game changer for the hearing aid industry. Unfortunately, all those investments require a long-term focus and staying power, because results won’t be obvious overnight. So don’t be surprised if we see the kind of short-term investment activity that gets immediate results and keeps shareholders happy instead. A couple of quick acquisitions of smaller hearing aid companies could reduce overall back office costs, enlarge share of market, and improve profits in short order.

But if acquisitions and other short-term investments don’t result in new products, new thinking, or new ways of reaching and serving new market segments–especially the millions of entry-level consumers with mild untreated hearing loss–then we’ll see more of the same in the hearing aid industry. Big players will continue to get bigger by serving the high end of the market. Only by taking the risk to invest in new products and services that could broaden the market with more affordable solutions will we see a step increase in growth rates in the global hearing aid industry.

ReSound Alera Success Drives GN Store Nord Hearing Aid Sales To 9% Global Growth And 23% Growth In U.S.

ReSound’s Alera hearing aids have put the Denmark company back on a strong growth track, with parent GN Store Nord reporting its hearing aid business revenues grew nine percent worldwide in the first fiscal quarter of 2011, with growth in the healthy North American market growing 23 percent. ReSound Alera high-end hearing aids feature like wireless connectivity, sophisticated sound processing software, and other advanced features. And in February 2011 ReSound announced availability of its new innovative “Remote Microphone” form factor for the Alera hearing aids, with the microphone sitting in the ear’s cymba concha and the speaker and sound-processing chip sitting deep within the ear canal.

“In Q1, we saw encouraging topline growth driven by ReSound Alera™ and the corresponding Beltone True™ family, including the wireless accessories,” said GN ReSound CEO Lars Viksmoen. “Organic revenue growth reached 9% mainly as a result of the first wave of form factors launched in 2010. During Q1, we launched the second wave of form factors and based on the experience so far we are adjusting the revenue guidance for 2011 upwards.”

The announcement came close to top competitor Sonova’s preliminary year-end fiscal announcement that its Phonak and Unitron hearing-aid sales grew more than 10 percent in its 2010-2011 fiscal year.

ReSound Extends Alera Hearing Aid Family With Remote Microphone Technology And An Upgradeable Behind-The-Ear Option

ReSound has extended its popular Alera hearing aid family by offering a model featuring its innovative remote microphone technology along with another new model, an upgradeable behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aid.

The extensions will enable Alera hearing aids to serve up to 90 percent of patients with hearing loss ranging from mild to profound. In addition to advanced sound processing, ReSound’s new flagship Alera hearing aids feature extensive wireless connectivity with external devices such as the television, MP3 players and Bluetooth phones.

By offering its Remote Microphone Technology configuration to Alera customers, ReSound is marrying premium digital hearing technology with a unique form factor that the company promises will deliver less feedback, better location of sound, and near-invisible cosmetics. Rather than integrating the microphone into the processing unit, Remote Microphone Technology puts the microphone at the end of a thin wire attached to a completely-in-the-canal (CIC) processor and speaker. The microphone is hidden under the cymba concha in the outer ear, where people with normal hearing start processing sound that reaches their ears. ReSound says the result is a more “natural sound” and better directional location of sounds.

The behind-the-ear model integrates more processing power into a smaller package than previous ReSound BTEs, and because the processor can be re-programmed to provide progressively more amplification, ReSound is positioning it as the only “configurable” BTE—”a standard BTE that can easily be converted to a very small high power instrument, with one housing for both”—providing patients with an adaptable hearing instrument solution should their hearing change over time.

The Alera extensions are a good example of a trend in the hearing aid industry, with major manufacturers developing advanced digital signal processing platforms, integrating wireless and other high-end functionality, and then deploying the platform technology in different configurations across different hearing-aid form factors to reach a broader market.

ReSound Donates Hearing Aids To Help America Hear Program

If you can’t afford hearing aids but need them, you may still be able to get them if you qualify. The Foundation for Sight & Sound is partnering with leading hearing-aid manufacturer ReSound to beef up its Help America Hear Program to provide more free hearing aids and proper hearing-aid fittings to people who can’t afford them. ReSound, the exclusive supplier of hearing aids to the program, has donated hundreds of pairs of hearing aids for people who meet financial eligibility requirements after applying on the Help America Hear web site.

The hearing aid industry manufacturers often define their work as a social mission to improve people’s lives by improving their ability to socialize and communicate. But it’s often hard to reconcile the claim that they are on a social mission when so many of their products are priced so high that only the very wealthiest of world’s consumers can afford them. Their social credibility would be higher if more manufacturers put their money where their mouth is by making a real effort to give something back, like ReSound and another notable example, Starkey Laboratories. Starkey Labs founder William Austen, whose Starkey Hearing Foundation has led the way for many years by raising millions of dollars to fund the donation of of hearing aids to tens of thousand of people around the world, says his foundation gives away 100,000 hearing aids a year, compared to the 1 million hearing aids sold annually by Starkey Labs: “It’s 10 percent, so it’s like tithing,” he told the Clark, County, WA, Columbian in an interview last Fall.

And the opportunity to give back doesn’t end with the manufacturers. There are millions of hearing aids sitting unused in bureau drawers around the world. Many of them could be reconditioned and provide a needy person with the gift of hearing. If you have a pair gathering dust in your drawer, you can donate them to Starkey’s Hear Now program. Another hearing aid manufacturer, America Hears, in the past has offered discounts to consumers who trade in their hearing aids and donates the used aids to a Rotary International Foundation program, Help the Children Hear.

ReSound’s Innovative Remote Microphone Technology Will Be Available With ReSound Alera Family Hearing Aids

When ReSound introduced its be by ReSound hearing aid several years ago, it was the first significant innovation in form factors I had seen in a while. By separating the microphone from the unit containing the digital signal processor (DSP) and receiver (speaker), be by ReSound opened up new possibilities for fitting in-the-ear (ITE) and completely in the canal (CIC) custom hearing aids. But be by Resound is an open-fit hearing aid for a limited range of fittings, mainly patients with mild hearing loss at higher frequencies.

Now with its announcement of its Remote Microphone (RM) Technology, ReSound is extending the concept to its popular ReSound Alera hearing aids and other custom hearing instruments. The result is a new class of hearing aids that will provide significant benefits — including more natural acoustic performance, more amplification in a smaller form factor, reduced feedback, and less wind-noise interference — for a broad range of users with mild, moderate and even severe hearing loss. Read more

GN ReSound Expects To Increase Its Share Of The Global Hearing Aid Market After A Slow Two Years, But Industry Growth Remains Anemic

More evidence of a turnaround in worldwide sales of hearing aids came with GN ReSound’s announcement of improved financial results today, but overall growth in the industry remains anemic. GN ReSound, one of the six largest global hearing aid makers, announced flat organic growth in the second quarter of 2010 over the same period in 2009, after sales declines in the previous five quarters. And the Denmark company made an optimistic forecast for the remainder of the year, predicting that it will increase its share of the global hearing aid market in the second half of 2010.

“We expect to grow above the market in the second half of 2010,” said Lars Viksmoen, CEO of GN ReSound, pointing to the successful introductions of new high-end hearing aid families in late 2009 and the first half of 2010. “This expectation is building on the successful introduction of the Surround Sound by ReSound-featured products–ReSound Live and dot2 by ReSound in late 2009–combined with the global launch of ReSound Alera.” Read more

GN ReSound Alera Arrives With Wireless Features Setting The Bar Higher For Premium Hearing Aids

The wireless features in the new GN ReSound Alera family of hearing aids, which start shipping this week, are very similar to those found in several other high-end hearing aids already announced by other manufacturers. But, taken together, they help set the bar higher for premium hearing aids and assistive listening devices in general. The only question is how much better the new wireless features will make the new hearing aids from GN ReSound and other manufacturers when users start trying them out in the field.

One of the first things you learn in Marketing 101 is that  ”first,” “best” and “only” are some of the strongest words in the English language. So it’s no surprise that in the increasingly competitive hearing-aid industry, manufacturers are starting to use those words more often. GN ReSound’s news release announcing first shipments of the Alera hearing aids is a good example, claiming the company has come up with “the first truly wireless hearing aid with no strings attached.” The news release goes on to announce “a new approach to the way a hearing aid receives sound from devices such as TVs, stereos, cell phones and computers,” claiming that, “for the first time the patient can receive sound directly from the device without cables, wires or the need to wear uncomfortable accessories.” Read more

ReSound Alera Hearing Aids Provide Wireless Connectivity To TV And Mobile Phones

GN ReSound’s new flagship family of Alera hearing aids will provide wireless connectivity directly with mobile phones and television sets equipped with ReSound’s new Unite assistive listening device (ALD) accessories.

Like other new wireless ALD accessories from Widex and other hearing-aid manufacturers, the ReSound Unite accessories eliminate the need for transmission through the hearing aid’s telecoil from a neckloop attached to the transmitter. And because the new ReSound Alera hearing aids communicate with the Unite accessories at 2.4 gigahertz, they eliminate the interference and delays sometimes experienced with slower wireless transmission speeds used by other manufacturers. Read more