As The Economy Turns: Audiology NOW! Exhibitors Promise To Feed Hearing-Aid Market Turnaround With New Products And Technology

I just arrived in beautiful San Diego to attend the American Academy of Audiology’s annual conference, Audiology NOW!, which has become the premier North American showcase for new products and technologies from large and small hearing-aid manufacturers. There seems to be a little more excitement from an industry that has been pummeled by the recession and held to low-to-no-digit sales growth in the past couple of years. This year, the big players have come locked and loaded. Everywhere one turns there seems to be a promotion for Oticon’s new Agil flagship product line. Panasonic will be making its formal U.S. market debut Thursday evening where Panasonic hearing’s US chief Delain Wright will share more of the company’s plans. Siemens has a huge booth in what will surely be a show of commitment to its hearing-aid business following its recent apparent decision not to spin off Siemens Hearing Instruments to private equity investors. Starkey is promising a slew of announcements Friday night in a function on the deck of the USS Midway aircraft carrier. And that’s just scratching the surface. I’ll be posting more news on everything that seems to be either interesting or important, or both.

Back in Business, After a Long Break

I’ve been letting people know I’m re-booting my Hearing Mojo hearing-loss blog after having taken a long break from posting new entries. In the past year I’ve let this blog lie dormant as I’ve gone completely “mainstream” with my communications consulting business, Aquarius Advisers. We have been successful, with a number of happy high-technology clients, but it’s been an education in coping with hearing loss in the business world. During my blogging hiatus, I’ve stayed current with the new developments in the world of hearing loss and hearing aids, including time spent consulting with America Hears, Inc., the leading online manufacturer and marketer of premium digital hearing aids. However, I’ve sorely missed writing about this industry and all the issues involved with it, so I intend to start doing so again. I’m still managing a transition to a new blogging platform (the new look and feel are enabled by the WordPress open-source content management system, as opposed to the Moveable Type platform I used in the past). So it might take me a while to get the new platform exposed to the search engines. But I’m starting to write again as of now. A lot has happened in my absence, and I intend to catch people up with all I’ve seen and heard, starting with my visit earlier this month to the American Academy of Audiology (AAA) AudiologyNow 2009 conference.

Oticon Introduces High-Function, High-Fashion Behind-The-Ear Hearing-Aids

Last year the hottest innovation driving the fastest-growing segment of the hearing-aid market was the “thin-tube, open-fit” design for behind-the ear (BTE) aids. This year, will the hottest new products be RITE? Oticon will show its new Delta “Receiver-in-the-Ear” hearing aids featuring the RITE architecture at the American Academy of Audiology annual conference in Minneapolis this week. Read more