Phonak Shrinks Lyric Invisible Hearing Aid And Improves Fit To Increase The Number Who Can Use It

Phonak announced it has shrunk its Lyric invisible hearing aids and improved the fit to make it accessible to 50 percent more consumers. The Lyric hearing aids meet the needs of people with mild to moderate hearing loss who are looking for a completely invisible hearing solution.

Placed deeply within the ear canal by an audiologist, the Lyric hearing aid is worn day and night for up to four months, when its battery expires and is replaced by the audiologist. The new size makes it easier to fit a larger number of consumers.

“I like to compare Lyric to the contact lens: just wear it and forget about it,” Phonak CEO Lukas Braunschweiler said in a news release. The Lyric hearing aids are sold on a subscription basis, with upgrades and service bundled into the subscription price.

Newly Renamed Starkey Hearing Technologies Plans To Keep Putting New Wine In New Bottles

Sometimes when a company changes its name, the first thing you think is “old wine in new bottles.” But when Starkey Laboratories, the 45-year-old hearing aid company, today announced its name change to Starkey Hearing Technologies, it reflected how far the company has come in recent years. It also sent a strong signal on where the company is going–toward a future focused on developing new hearing technologies and integrating them into multiple brands of new hearing products for big consumer markets.

In recent years, Starkey has emerged as one of the top five global hearing aid companies, with nearly a billion dollars of sales from a broad line of products that meet consumers’ entire range of hearing needs. Its five hearing aid brands–Audibel, AudioSync, NuEar, MicroTech and the original Starkey brand–are increasingly driven by a common platform of new technologies in digital signal processing, sound processing, miniaturization, wireless connectivity to your phone, TV and other devices, and wireless binaural communication between hearing aids for a more natural balanced sound.

“Over the past decade, we have gone from a manufacturing company to a global technology company,” Jerry Ruzicka, President of Starkey Hearing Technologies, said in a news release. “The name change better aligns with both who we are as an organization, as well as our focus on innovation, technology and the diverse customers we serve.”

Starkey was founded in Minnesota by William Austin, who has devoted more time in recent years to philanthropy. His Starkey Hearing Foundation to date has given away more than 500,000 hearing aids to people in need in the U.S. and around the world, with a commitment to giving away more than 100,000 hearing aids annually and a goal of one million more this decade. In the meantime, Starkey’s new generation of operating leadership has poured money into R&D and new-product development, and the results are starting to make a big impact on hearing-industry markets.

Once known more for its sales strength than leadership in innovation, in recent years Starkey caught up to and in many instances surpassed other leading hearing-aid manufacturers in developing and promoting hot new technologies. Just this week the company’s new AMP “invisible” hearing aid is being honored at the International Consumer Electronics Show with a 2012 Innovations Design and Engineering Award.

But the newly named Starkey Hearing Technologies won’t be able to rest on its laurels, or its name change, to continue competing successfully in the increasingly competitive global high-end hearing technology industry, where all the leaders are driving the advanced technologies in their hearing aids into consumer products for markets such as high-tend audio, Bluetooth phones, headsets and earphones, and wireless devices.

Industry leader Sonova Group, whose Phonak brand has been both a technology and a marketing leader for years, has continued to drive innovation in sound processing and wireless technologies. GN Store Nord, parent of ReSound hearing aids, also has a Netcom headset division that is driving into industrial hearing protection and consumer markets for earphones and headsets including the popular Jabra bluetooth phone earpieces. And Oticon hearing-aid parent William Demant’s similar push into consumer hearing technologies is led by its high-end Sennheiser headsets and other well-known audio brands.

Sonova Reports 10 Percent Increase In Hearing Aid Sales And Resumes Cochlear Implant Shipments

Sonova Group, parent of the Phonak and Unitron hearing aid brands, issued a preliminary financial report announcing that its hearing-aid sales increased 10.1 percent in the 2010-2011 fiscal year, powered by strong market acceptance of its high-end hearing aids based on its new Spice sound processing hardware and software platform.

The Swiss holding company also announced that it is resuming sales of its cochlear implants outside the U.S. following approval by European regulators of manufacturing changes that it says solved its product quality problems with its Advanced Bionics cochlear implants following a worldwide recall after problems surfaced with several of its implants. The company also said it is filing notice of the manufacturing changes with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to gain approval for resuming sales in North America as well.

Sonova, which was rocked by an insider-trading scandal that resulted in the resignations of its chief executive officer and chief financial officer in April, said overall sales for the group, which includes its implant business as well as hearing protection products, grew 7.8 percent in the fiscal year. The company said it will report complete results for the fiscal year on May 24.

Hearing Mojo Publishes Hearing Aid Comparison Chart With Data On Leading Global Manufacturers’ Flagship Hearing Aid Brands

NOTE: Due to a bad WordPress Plugin, the chart comparing premium hearing aid brands is temporarily unavailable. We’re working to develop a new, better chart, but in the meantime have taken this page off our navigation menus. However, it’s still available through search engines, so if you’ve reached this page and are disappointed the chart is not here, we apologize. We’ll get a new chart up as soon as we can.

THANKS

Shopping for hearing aids and other assistive listening technologies can be confusing and intimidating. With our focus on products and technologies for hard-of-hearing consumers, Hearing Mojo has gathered a lot of information on the leading brands of hearing aids and other devices and technologies that are available. Now we’ve organized data on the flagship brands from the world’s six largest hearing aid manufacturers and presented it in our first hearing aid comparison chart.

While the hearing aid comparison chart is by no means an exhaustive list, it does give consumers shopping for hearing aids an idea of what high-end features and functions are available from the world’s leading hearing aid brands. It also provides estimated prices for the premium brand hearing aids. Most important, it offers multiple links to other Hearing Mojo articles about the hearing aid products and brands, and the companies behind them, as well as direct links to the manufacturers’ product web sites.

The only way hard-of-hearing consumers can assure themselves they will get products at appropriate prices that will help them the most is to do extensive research. The comparison of six of the best-known premium brands is a good place to start. They include Oticon Agil (William Demant Holding), Starkey Wi Series (Starkey Laboratories), Phonak Ambra (Sonova Holding), ReSound Alera (GN Store Nord), Widex Clear440 (Widex), and Siemens Motion (Siemens Hearing Instruments).

Just keep in mind that there are dozens of other manufacturers who offer high-quality hearing aids with comparable price/performance, and each listed company offers numerous other hearing aids at other price/performance levels as well. So look carefully at the information on the chart, visit the multiple links, then look beyond this short list if you are serious about buying hearing aids.

We would love reader feedback on this first hearing-aid comparison chart, as we expect to develop additional comparison charts on other types of hearing aids and assistive listening devices.

Phonak Rounds Out Spice Platform Family With Entry- And Mid-Range Hearing Aids Plus Phonak CROS Solution For Single-Sided Deafness

Phonak today expanded its array of products based on its new Spice sound processing platform with the entry-level and mid-range Cassia and Solana hearing aids as well as the new Phonak CROS solution addressing the problem of single-sided deafness.

Phonak’s Spice Generation platform, introduced last Fall, provides a much smaller, faster processor along with numerous wireless features to provide state-of-the-art features in the company’s new hearing aids, loading them with features usually found only in premium hearing hearing aids. And by utilizing the Spice chipset for the Phonak CROS solution, the company is able to provide a feature-rich, flexible set of solutions for people with one completely deaf ear. Read more

Phonak Spices Up Its New Ambra And Audeo S Hearing Aids With A Next-Generation Digital Signal Processing Platform

Worldwide hearing-aid market leader Phonak is rolling out its new Ambra and Audeo S families of hearing aids based on its “Spice Generation” sound processing and fitting platform. At the heart of the new platform is the new Spice digital signal processing (DSP) chipset, which has twice the processing power, is twice as fast and has three times the memory than the company’s previous DSP platform. The Spice Generation platform also enables smaller form factors, which the company calls “CountourDesign,” and it comes with a new “Target” software system to make it easier for audiologists to program the new hearing aids to more exactly meet their patients’ needs.

The company calls its new Phonak Ambra hearing aid family “the premium flagship of the Phonak Spice Generation.” It features true binaural communication between both hearing aids in a set, enabling users to more easily locate sound and hear better in challenging listening environments, “adaptive intelligence” which personalizes the hearing instrument by enabling it to adapt to the users’ environment, and a smaller, more elegant design. Among other things, binaural communication enables a “DuoPhone” feature which allows the user to have phone conversations streamed to both ears simultaneously for better telephone comprehension. Binaural communications also enables “StereoZoom,” which creates a bi-directional network of four telephones from two hearing instruments to locate sound and focus on a single speaker while suppressing other sounds, and “auto ZoomControl” which automatically determines where the dominant voice is in the room and focuses on it.

In addition to superior next-generation performance, the Ambra hearing aids are 20 to 30 percent smaller than Phonak’s earlier Exelia models. They are available in all form factors, including both behind-the-ear (BTE) and custom in-the-ear formats.

The Audeo S hearing aids, also based on the Spice Generation platform, are the next generation of Phonak’s popular Audeo tiny open-fit, behind-the-ear products with speaker-in-the-ear — or as the company puts it, “canal-receiver technology” (CRT). The Audeo S aids come in three Model versions at three performance and price levels. Audeo S MINI is the standard performance level, Audeo S SMART offer power performance, and Audeo S YES offers super-power performance. Because of improved feedback canceling and noise suppression, the super-power model widens the fitting range of the open-fit products to extend into severe-hearing-loss territory. According to a presentation at the EUHA (International Union of Hearing Aid Acousticians) conference last October by Valentin Chapero, CEO of Phonak’s corporate parent Sonova Group, the market for CRT’s is growing faster than any other kind of hearing aid.

While William Demant and GN ReSound Fought Over Otix, Sonova Widened Its Hearing-Aid Industry Market Lead

As GN ReSound and William Demant battled over who would win the battle to acquire Otix Global this fall, hearing-aid industry leader Sonova stuck to its knitting and on Nov. 16 claimed it has widened its market share lead. But at the same time, all three of the publicly traded hearing-aid manufacturers hinted they have turned the corner after several years of anemic growth in the global recession.

Sonova, parent of Phonak and other hearing-aid brands, reported more than eight percent organic growth in the first six months of its fiscal year in addition to revenue gains from the acquisitions of cochlear implant maker Advanced Bionics and InSound Medical, developer of the “invisible” Lyric hearing aid. With the growth in the global hearing aid market projected at no more than five percent in 2010, Sonova’s growth, powered by a slew of successful new products introduced over the past two years, earned it a substantial increase in market share. However, in the same report, the holding company lowered its earnings forecast for the remainder of the year, disappointing investors looking for earnings growth combined with faster revenue growth in the industry. Read more

Phonak Dynamic Soundfield Technology Turns The Classroom Into A Giant Hearing Aid

Soundfield classroom amplification systems have improved the education and lives of thousands of schoolchildren who otherwise would miss valuable instruction simply because they cannot hear their teachers well enough to understand what they are teaching. Now Phonak has put its vast experience designing hearing aids to use with a next-generation soundfield system featuring a 12-speaker array that reduces echoing and reverberation and automatically adjusts frequency and volume levels to achieve optimum signal-to-noise ratios in changing listening environments.  The new Phonak Dynamic Soundfield system essentially turns the entire classroom into a giant hearing aid that can dramatically improve comprehension and learning. Read more

Will HearingPlanet Still Give Objective Advice About Other Hearing Aid Brands When It Is Owned By Phonak Parent Sonova?

Audiology Online published an intriguing interview yesterday with a senior executive of the The Sonova Group, parent of the Phonak, Lyric and Unitron hearing-aid brands, among others, on why Sonova acquired HearingPlanet, the popular web site that provides detailed information on multiple hearing-aid brands for potential customers. In the AudiologyOnline Q&A, Sonova Group Vice President Alexander Zschokke says the acquisition will enable Sonova to “provide more leads” to the audiologists and other hearing health care professionals who dispense Sonova’s hearing aids. But the one question the interview doesn’t ask is, “Will HearingPlanet still give objective advice about other hearing aid brands when it is owned by Phonak’s parent company?”

HearingPlanet’s success for more than a decade has been based on its ability to offer objective advice to potential purchasers of hearing aids who may be confused about the many choices among different manufacturers’ brands, form factors, product types, and prices. On its web site, HearingPlanet notes that with “numerous brands and styles available,” hearing-aid buyers should “compare prices and technology across brands” and “choose a hearing care provider which offers multiple brands and models so that you can find the right hearing aid for your needs.” It goes on to provide a wealth of information that will help you research the various choices in the market, including a fact-filled comparison chart on 18 different hearing-aid brands that includes major features and pricing.

So there seems to be a potential built-in conflict between Sonova’s stated desire to use HearingPlanet to send more buyers to dispensers of Sonova-owned hearing aid brands, and HearingPlanet’s traditional mission to provide objective advice about multiple brands so customers will find the product that suits them best, regardless of the brand. Of course, this is the real world of commerce, where conflicts of interest abound (see: Goldman Sachs), and it would be self defeating for HearingPlanet to change its winning formula for one that favored one manufacturers’ brands over all others. As of today, the only possible sign of favoritism is the fact that Phonak is the first brand name on the HearingPlanet comparison chart, but that’s not a big deal — anyone who doesn’t look past the first entry on a comparison chart isn’t really looking for comparative information anyway. Otherwise HearingPlanet looks much the same, and we will see if the site changes at all over time.

The acquisition is an interesting example of the consolidation trend in the hearing-aid industry. Phonak’s CEO Valentin Chapero several years ago unsuccessfully attempted to reduce the number of hearing-aid manufacturers with global reach by making a bid to acquire GN ReSound (the acquisition was thwarted by a German antitrust court ruling, which, though later overturned, ended the acquisition bid for good). Since then, financial analysts have said the global hearing aid industry might consolidate through other mergers, through the leading manufacturers increasing their market share, and through the major players acquiring their distribution channels to capture more revenue and gain leverage from vertical integration.

HearingPlanet is a spectacularly successful generator of highly qualified leads to audiologists — in the interview, Sonova’s Zschokke notes that even though most of the people who go to HearingPlanet have never worn a hearing aid before, more than fifty percent of the patients HearingPlanet refers to a hearing health professional in its network go on to purchase hearing aids. So Sonova is smart to want to own HearingPlanet to make sure the leads keep coming to Phonak and its other brands. But let’s hope Sonova doesn’t kill this golden goose by undermining HearingPlanet’s traditional objectivity, depth of information, and excellent advice in any way.

Phonak Uses World Cup Vuvuzela Noise As Design Laboratory For New Hearing Protection Products

Phonak’s Hear the World initiative got so much attention from its announcement that vuvuzela horns were damaging World Cup attendees’ hearing that the hearing aid company’s product designers sprung into action to adapt Phonak’s popular Serenity industrial hearing-protection products with a new line of consumer devices for fans who need to protect their hearing at stadium events such as major league sports events and rock and roll concerts. Hear the World announced that Phonak customized a new version of its Serenity state-of-the-art hearing protection systems–typically used by helicopter pilots, fire-fighters, industrial staff and security professionals–and sent it to World Cup journalists in Johannesburg, South Africa, to see how well it would filter out the endless drone of the vuvuzela. The noise makers emit sound at an ear-splitting 127 decibels (dB), louder than a lawnmower (90 dB) and chain saw (100 dB). Continuous exposure to noise at more than 85 dB will cause permanent hearing damage, so virtually all fans in a stadium enduring an extended chorus of vuvuzela noise are at serious risk of hearing loss. Read more

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