07 Nick Hunn: The future of ‘Hearables’
kev_1_02-20-2025_134204: Welcome
to Season 2 of Product Power Wow.
In this episode, I talk to Nick
Hunn, who's a global expert in
wireless technologies generally, and
more specifically, in what he calls
hearables, which are ear based wearables.
We cover a lot of ground, including
audio, hearing loss, health sensing,
and voice control use cases.
And two strong themes include the
nuances of human perception and
behavior around this highly intimate
technology and the search for
sustainable business models based on
all that data that wearables collect.
This episode is on the longer side, but to
be frank, it was tough to edit Nick down
as he delivers all killer and no filler.
So I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307:
welcome to the podcast, Nick.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: you.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: now we
met, about 10 years ago at a wearables
event that we're both speaking at, and
it was in the, just to date it Fitbit
was a thing, and, Apple Watch had just
launched, and These were generally seen
as the first wave of a coming wave of
wearables, and there was lots of talk
about, rings, smart specs, patches,
all sorts of different form factors
on all different parts of the body.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: But I
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: I
remember you put in the case, For
what you called hearables, and
ear based wearable technology.
had one of the most promising
futures in terms of, form factors
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: And with
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: with recent
developments, particularly from Cupertino,
I thought it'd be great to have you on to
catch up with where we are with hearables.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307:
you just want to
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307:
maybe what the future holds.
So do you just want to start by just
saying a little bit about how you
got into this whole category or how
you fell into this whole category?
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: think
fall is probably the right word.
I've always loved making things.
I still claim I'm a physicist, but I've
worked on things from high powered lasers,
through to sperm and embryo freezers,
of communication devices, and recently,
hearables and other medical devices.
I just love the fact that can make
things and hopefully you can make things
that are useful rather than just making
things for the sake of making things.
One of the things that was fascinating
around the time we met is the
development of miniature sensors.
that was very much driven
by the phone industry.
Manufacturers realized that you could
put more into phones, and this was
even before Apple came on the scene.
We were seeing accelerometers, other sorts
of sensors, and we saw the beginning of
a sort of consumer medical devices, where
people were saying, we can actually put
sensors in things that you can wear.
and that's where sort of the wearables
industry started up probably about
10 years ago before we were sitting
there talking to each other.
at that point, I think a lot of
it was around smart clothing.
And we then got to the point that
technology could shrink down to
where you could start to put it in
something you put on your wrist.
And that was the original
Fitbits, the Garmins.
All of these things that we no
longer remember because they they
came, they flared up and they went.
And it felt to me at the time that
everybody was concentrating on the wrist.
In a way, because it was
the easy thing to do.
But it's about the worst
possible place to put a sensor.
these sensors like to
be close to your body.
They don't like moving around.
And we all shake our
hands around all the time.
The ear is the exact opposite.
It's designed to be the most
stable part of our body.
It's what keeps us upright and sort of,
it's moist, it's close to blood flow,
it's the ideal place to put sensors.
And people had been
experimenting with that.
at the same time we were beginning
to see developments in Bluetooth
technology, which meant you could shrink
stuff down to the size of earbuds.
And that's when I also got involved
with, starting to work on the new
Bluetooth audio standards, working
alongside a lot of hearing aid
companies and realizing what amazing
tech actually goes into hearing aids.
We forget just how clever
the tech in hearing aids is.
Most of them are way ahead of what
we typically see in earbuds today.
but, it's one reason they're expensive.
Because it's a real sort of technical
3D origami job, And that was when it
struck me that we probably ought to be
focusing on putting more into our ears.
That started to happen in terms of putting
sensors in, but most of it has been just
lots of little white things in our ears
that lets us consume more music content
I still feel, maybe 10 years on from
when we had that first conversation, I
was saying, no, the ear is the place.
That we're only just at the beginning
of what we can actually do in terms of
Putting medical sensors on ourselves
and really making hearables and headworn
devices into the way that we move forward.
So it's an exciting period.
We're seeing lots of different
things coming together.
I think we're seeing some
really clever products.
We're seeing some.
really bizarre, if not stupid products.
And at some point in the next four or
five years, I'm hoping we're going to
see something that takes data off those
and gives us back something useful.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: Absolutely.
I've done a bit of work in the hearing
aid department and I was really struck
by the mismatch of the general reputation
of hearing aids, and the appearance
of most of them which Dated and bland,
often for the right reasons, particularly
the sort of discreet appearance and
just how high tech and sophisticated
they were inside, compared to, say,
consumer earbuds, which are seen as
high tech, it seems a real mismatch.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: it is
unusual to see half a dozen microphones
in this tiny little hearing aid.
the industry is probably using AI
better than virtually any other.
you don't know much about it, it
just works out where you are, what
sort of background noise you have,
and how to adjust the sound to
give you the best possible hearing.
incredible just how much is squeezed into
them and the fact that they will run on
their batteries for two or three days.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: Yeah,
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: top
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: indeed.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307:
earbuds are struggling to last
more than two or three hours.
they go down the normal consumer route
as they put more and more features in
which drain more and more of the battery.
So the battery life never
really gets much longer.
With hearing aids, you've got that
totally different mindset of if they
could make it last for a week, they
will try and make it last for a week.
But how many devices do you
want to charge every day?
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: just before
we, we dig in on hearables, let's
just, hover up a little bit and maybe
look back, over the last 10 years.
And where would you say we
are with wearables in general?
there was a lot of heady excitement.
10 years ago.
lots of hopes.
and I think we probably all assumed that,
by this time everyone would be walking
around with some kind of wearable on.
And besides the success of,
obviously the Apple Watch,
that's not particularly the case.
And obviously there's
lots of headphones around.
but where would you say we are?
what have been the hits and
misses and why haven't wearables
lived up to the expectations
that we had maybe 10 years ago?
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: I have
a vague feeling that when we first met
at that wearables conference, I showed
a slide, to try and say this is one
of the issues that you've got with any
form of wearable that's capturing data.
one of the early ideas with wearables
was very much the health one of we
will capture data about your medical
conditions, your health conditions.
We'll send that back to
a server in the cloud.
We'll do lots of clever data analytics.
And then we'll give you back some
information that will actually
help you to improve your life.
And a lovely story.
there's one real issue with it, which
is In general, the companies making
wearables are hardware companies.
They're really good at cramming
lots of tech into a small product.
of them are really good at making it look
attractive and having a user interface.
But generally, they know very
little about data analytics.
stream all of this data off, the problem
is when you start, you don't actually know
whether you can infer anything out of it.
You need a lot of data from a lot
of people, generally, in order to
do any useful data analytics, need
quite a lot of additional metadata in
order to put that into perspective.
And then you hope that once you've
acquired all of that you're going
to be able to infer something is so
useful that the person will probably
give you an ongoing monthly contract
to get updates on what comes back.
And nobody's really
worked out what that is.
If you look at almost every
wearable, of it's about consuming
data from something else.
The most successful one have been earbuds.
earbuds are shipping out in their
billions each year all they're used
for, bar a very few exceptions,
is just to consume content.
It's streaming music or
podcasts into your ears.
If we look at the smartwatches, Apple's
the most successful but it doesn't
have that many applications that are
actually using the data it collects.
most people are using it simply as
a smaller screen so they don't have
to get the phone out of the pocket.
And what that probably tells us is
people would rather not have to look
at their phones a lot of the time but
just have information conveyed to them.
The issue for almost all wearable
manufacturers has been, how
do you capture the consumer
with a compelling application?
you've certainly got some for the
sort of the, Professional amateur
end of sort of athletics and sports,
but you don't have a lot else.
even for medical applications and
health applications people have.
A long term chronic condition which
will improve even if they just
monitor their data and look at it.
They're not widely used.
And companies have set up to try
and do things with this and they've
generally lasted a year or two
and then just gently disappeared.
We don't see much which goes
much beyond counting steps.
to be perfectly honest, the Japanese had
little things that you tied onto your
shoelaces 30 years ago that did that.
and I don't know how we get over that
point of accumulating enough data to
be able to do some useful inference to
provide feedback that people will pay for.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307:
is it enough data?
Is it the right type of data?
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: the problem
is you don't actually know when you start.
We don't know whether blood pressure or
blood sugar or rate or any combination
of those gives you meaningful inference.
data that you can give back
to a user for them to follow.
We do know on the health devices, and it's
not just health devices, even something as
simple as getting people to regularly take
a prescribed medicine is really difficult.
or human beings, are very good at
not actually following advice or
deciding they'll just do something
else because it doesn't matter today.
I know it probably
doesn't matter tomorrow.
There are those, and it's a small
segment, who will slavishly follow
what they're told because I think
it's going to make them better.
But the vast majority don't.
that's the issue for the industry.
That you can make something really
shiny and attractive with flashing
lights and nice OLED screens.
But if it's going to do much more than
just show you your latest train ticket
or you an easy way to look at your
messages without getting your phone out
it isn't actually changing very much.
It's just Another alternative
way of conveying information.
Apple, I think, is a fascinating
company because many of their users have
signed up so that their data is going
off to a store somewhere and I assume
that somebody somewhere is looking
at it and trying to infer something.
When it first came out, Apple had
quite a big research project to working
with different medical institutes to
you to grant your data so that they
could use that to try and come up with
better ways to cope with our health.
I've not heard very much come out of that.
And I suspect the issue is it's actually
a It's rather more difficult trying to
give us personalized health information
on an ongoing daily basis than people
tend to think when you just say, look,
I can measure some things so I can
tell you how to improve your life.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: But
the reason why I asked type
of data, because you're right.
a lot of the metric, that we're
given are highly inferred with lots
and lots of assumptions and, medical
professionals, raise their eyebrows
about, how accurate, the end metrics are.
But if, if Apple does make a
breakthrough with say measuring blood
oxygen levels or whatever, that would
be seriously helpful, wouldn't it?
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: I think
point somebody makes a breakthrough,
it's going to transform the industry.
At the moment.
It's still a hope based industry that
somebody will find something that goes
beyond the dedicated people that want to
be connected, and which could suddenly be
appropriate to a much wider demographic.
But we're all at that point, hoping
that there is something out there,
and that one day we're going to find
it, and a combination of sensors will
provide the data, which gives us real
marker that can be used, and you've
got, certainly different areas looking
at it, you have People, companies,
researchers are totally altruistic
about this, that they really want to
be able to keep people alive longer
to reduce suffering, and that's great.
you have some very hard nosed companies
out there saying, if we can do this,
we can make sort of 29, 50, whatever a
month out of every person on the world.
And we're still in this hope bubble
of surely if we get enough data,
we will be able to find something.
that's now transformed itself and
called itself AI, that if we have enough
data, something will come out of it.
but I think we're all wondering just what
is it and when are we going to see it?
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: Yeah, I
always remember doing some research,
probably eight, nine years ago.
and we found lots of people who had
Fitbits, but they weren't on their wrists.
They were tucked away
in a drawer somewhere.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: looked at
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: And,
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: digital
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: often the,
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: I
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307:
the answers we got.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307:
knew that, but
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307:
for why that was.
I
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: was
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: wore it
for the first two or three weeks and
someone explained it quite nicely.
So it gave me a digital mirror of
my activity during the week, but my
activities have, I've got the same
pattern every week and I go, yeah, okay.
I knew that, but it's, it was
quite interesting, but wants
it, it ran out of charge.
They just didn't feel the need to,
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: to charge
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: To
charge it after a few times
because they didn't feel the need.
It wasn't telling them anything new.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307:
that the whole point that
you need compelling feedback.
And if it's not compelling, then
the lifetime of that product is
probably its first charge cycle.
I love the way as well that
there was one point where.
health insurers were giving away Fitbits
and Apple Watches and saying, if you
want one of these, we'll give you a
reduction on your health insurers and
then realize that probably as soon as you
got them, they were being sold on eBay.
And we're saying, no, we
need to see data coming back.
So people just put them on
their kids or their dogs.
So there'd be data stream going back.
that's one of the interesting ones that
people saw those as generally a source
of revenue, either because it reduced
their insurance costs, or else they could
flog it to somebody else, but didn't
primarily see it as something that was
actually going to make them healthier.
we're complicated beings,
which is great in many ways.
It's not so wearables manufacturer.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: So I
think we'll, by the end of this,
we'll see, sharper opportunities,
for those manufacturers, but let's
get back to hearing aids then.
So we talked about with both.
I'm struck by how high
tech those devices are.
I don't know quite when it happened,
let's call it the last 10, 15
years, there's, they were digitized.
So could you talk about what
that phase change from analog to
digital meant for hearing aids?
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: So
hearing aids in an electronic form have
been around about 70 years, early ones
were valve amplifiers that you'd cart
around in a backpack or have yourself
and push around on a trolley behind you.
but they've been getting smaller.
it's an industry that's really
very, very keen to help people.
that, that's something that's really come
over is just how much passion there is.
there's certainly companies where you'll
see, senior managers and even owners
themselves trained as audiologists and
will still go out and be fitting kids
and other people with hearing aids.
because there's all sorts of issues that
we know are associated with hearing loss.
not least the lack of social interaction.
There's estimates that you're likely
to, get Alzheimer's probably five or six
years earlier if you have hearing loss.
potentially, again, due to that
lack of social interaction.
it's really good to help
people with hearing.
Hearing aids got smaller, but
with analogue technology, there
wasn't too much you could do.
They were basically just amplifiers
and filters that would try and
amplify the particular frequencies
that would help with hearing.
Digitization really made a major step
change in the way they could work.
and a key part of that was you started
to go away from simple analogue to using
digital signal processors, commonly
called DSPs, to do all of that processing.
for listening.
Those allowed you to do much more in
terms of looking at what would actually
help individuals, with, all of the
differences that you have between
the different types of hearing loss.
But the other important aspect of those is
it allowed you to have more microphones.
There's a number of reasons
you want more microphones.
The first one is that if you have
more than one microphone, you can
actually position them as an array
so you can start to do beam steering.
And that means you can Arrange it to
try and pick up sound that may be coming
from in front of you or from around you.
And that's something that you
want depending on where you are.
If you're just talking to a single
person, you ideally want to pick up the
sound from in front of you and not pick
up what may be behind you or beside you.
if you're at the theatre,
that's exactly what want to do.
You want to have that sound coming
in if you're watching a television.
If you're in the middle of a meeting You
want to hear sound from all around you.
if you're at the dinner table
with friends, and you've got
the family round for dinner,
you want to hear all around you.
So by using multiple microphones,
you can start to play those tricks of
actually changing the characteristic
of what you're picking up.
You've got the ability as well to start
to process the sound around you and use
that to Make an estimate of where you are.
Are you in a restaurant?
Are you walking down the street?
Are you in a quiet room?
And using that to then attenuate
certain frequencies, which may
be getting in the way of speech
recognition, or to open that up.
And it's around this time you'll
see that hearing aids started to
include something called a preset.
And those were, Basically, simple pre
configured programs that would change
the way the hearing aid worked in terms
of trying to filter out unwanted sound
and to concentrate on the wanted sound.
Those typically require a user to
change them, to suit where they are.
That may be pressing a button on them.
you may use it from a little remote
control and more recently, you may have
an app on your phone that will do that.
And on the latest hearing aids coming
out, that becomes more automated.
So those functions.
allowed the hearing aids to, pack in
a lot more in terms of capability.
But once you go digital, you get
the advantages of Moore's law, and
you can start to shrink things down.
That, in theory, means you can make
smaller hearing aids, and we have
ones you can now fit within your
ear canal, as opposed to the ones
that over the back of your ear.
And it also means, by taking those
advantages of Moore's law, that
you can increase battery life.
And the hearing aid industry is amazing.
at how low power it can do audio.
it makes you look at all of the
other earbuds out there and think.
That's really quite poor technology,
and the aim of a hearing aid is they
typically used to run off a single
little, zinc oxide air cell, which would
provide that hearing aid, it would be
in your ears, typically average hearing
aids worn for 10 to 12 hours a day,
and that would last and work listening
the whole time for five or six days.
that's incredibly better than
anything else that you'll
buy in a consumer product.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: why is that?
You'd think that the likes of Apple or
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: bit more?
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: Bose or
whatever would have access to, chips
further up Moore's Law's curve than
the smaller, hearing aid industry.
So why can't the big tech companies,
replicate that sort of lean approach
to, to batteries and what have you,
particularly when they're driving
more microphones and, and speakers.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: I think the
interesting is the level of optimization,
and it's all about attention to detail.
It was one of the fascinating things I
discovered when I was working with hearing
aid companies and also getting them to
work within specification groups, is when
you write specifications, you generally
say, Let's make this sort of general
purpose because people use it in different
ways and you realize for the hearing aid
companies that each of them are Optimizing
their designs to the nth degree that each
of the most of the hearing aid companies
will work designing their own chips they
may do that internally they may do it with
very specialist low powered chip designers
and They don't put in any anything
really that they're not going to use.
If you look at a lot of the consumer
electronics, it's the same chips that
go into headsets and hearing aids
and speakers, and they're designed
very much as general purpose chips.
you look at how long it takes to produce
a new version of a chip, If you're looking
at very customised chips of the highest
performance, you can look at a turnaround
time from start of design to spinning
and taping out and getting the chips
back in production of about five years.
If you look at commercial products,
That rate is down 18 months.
the chips going into consumer
products spin much faster but they
typically don't optimize anything
like as much in order to do that.
And, because they're going into multiple
products you get a sort of tick box
design of how many different things can
I put into it which, even if they're not
being used, leech some of the power away.
yes, you could take that approach But
for most consumer products, Apple did a
really clever thing with its battery box.
I say Apple, company that first really
started the first hearables in terms of
earbuds was a German company called Bragi.
a Kickstarter campaign for a
pair of earbuds called the Dash.
It is a testament to how good that
company was that they actually
managed to ship product that worked.
They are so complex to do.
but they designed a battery box
and the theory is you take things
out of Euros and you put them in
the battery box and they recharge.
And most users don't realize that
their earbuds don't have an all day
battery life because they keep on
taking them out while they have a
conversation, put them into charge.
The issue with hearing aids is you can't
take them out to have a conversation.
that's the whole point of hearing aids.
You put them in your ears when you wake
up and they stay in the whole day and
they have to be on and work the whole day.
So it's, A very different way of designing
that hearing aids you have to have that
at least a day long battery life and
hearing aids are going rechargeable
you really need to design them to try
and give you about a two day battery
life so you've got a spare day when
you've left your charger behind.
But for Earbuds, we're just seeing
on the consumer side, people are
saying no, we want to put in more
features, we want to have more flashing
lights, we want spatial technology,
we want all of the rest of this.
And the overall battery
life doesn't go up.
What actually happens is you find
the battery box gets a bit bigger,
so it's got a bit more charging to
keep them boosted for all of those
points where you take them out.
But it relies on the fact that you will
take them out and not realise that if you
hadn't done that you'd have lost that.
but in everyday life, that battery
box is an absolutely brilliant trick
to fool everybody into thinking
you've got a product that's been
designed with decent battery life
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: Step away
from the technology for a second.
let's talk about developments in
getting hearing aids into people's ears.
and until recently it's always been,
I think mostly through an audiologist.
You go to a professional who gives you
a hearing test, recommends the right
product for you, depending on what
kind of health care system you're in
and what insurance you have, you then.
Buy or choose, something that
you'll have and then it'll be fitted
and tailored to you or whatever.
that's slightly changed recently.
Do you just want to talk about shift?
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307:
what you've described is the way
most people get hearing aids.
And there's interesting aspect
of that, which I think we'll may
come to in a minute about the
stigma of having hearing aids.
Most people put off having a hearing
aid probably until about 10 years after
the point that they would actually
have benefited from having one.
there's Sort of an anecdote
within the industry.
The reason most people go for a
hearing test that their partner
has told them that if they don't,
they're going to have a divorce.
and it's that frustration of not
being able to hear each other.
I know from my own parents, my dad
would turn the TV up to a point that
it deafened everybody else in the room,
and there was a constant fight over
the remote control for the TV set.
it's those practical issues of
hearing loss that finely drive
people to get hearing aids and far
too few people go and get a hearing
test at the point they should do.
there's a knock on effect for that, which
is that most hearing aids are designed
for people with quite severe hearing loss.
because if nobody's going to come
and buy one when they've got just
low levels of hearing loss, why
design a product for a market that
doesn't admit that it wants it?
And once you get to those higher
levels, you really need a product
that can be set up to work for you.
Hence the of taking it
through an audiologist.
because at that level of hearing
loss as well, if you get it wrong,
and you just go and get hold of a
hearing aid from somewhere and put
it in and it's incorrectly set up,
it could do more damage than good.
there's a very good reason for that.
I said, Only about 10 percent of people
who need hearing aids have them, so
there is a massive market out there
that still is largely unexplored.
And I think a lot of that sort of
comes down to the stigma, which
is what stops people going out and
having their initial hearing test.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: well,
let's unpack that a little bit.
what's driving that stigma and
do you see any way around it?
Do you see any, promising
changes or dynamics that are,
are removing that stigma?
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307:
I think it's going to be slow.
I'd really thought and hoped when we saw
the first hearables, and then particularly
when Apple brought out AirPods to such
success, that would result in a change.
And surprisingly, it hasn't
actually had much effect.
and it's a really interesting one because
I'm old enough to remember time when
there was a stigma about wearing glasses.
if you were a child at school
and you had a problem with your
sight, you would not wear glasses,
if you could possibly avoid it.
everybody would.
Buller you, you'd be called Specky or
Four Eyes, And then John Lennon came along
and suddenly glasses were fashionable.
and the world's never looked back.
We have fashion brands in glasses.
We have a whole multi
billion pound industry.
Making glasses frames and they're
very desirable and despite the fact
that you can get contact lenses Lots
of people still like wearing glasses.
It's great it's so why can't it happen
to our ears and I don't think anybody
knows the answer now one of the
Interesting aspects to that and you
see this with hearing aids have tried
to make themselves looking conspicuous
Hearing aids today are just incredibly
small, lightweight, and you don't really
notice that people are wearing them.
and still there's a stigma to them.
One of the interesting issues, I
think many of us thought that AirPods
would kill that stigma, but if
you're wearing them, The assumption
is you're not paying attention to
somebody trying to talk to you.
And in order to pay attention, that person
expects you to take out your AirPods and
put them back in the battery box so that
they're not listening to something else.
And we still equate them with earplugs,
which mean I don't want to listen to you.
And I don't know whether
we can change that.
we had one or two manufacturers
do things like now we've got
transparent modes, so you can just.
Tap them and they turn off or they
actually work as hearing aids and make
it easier for me to listen to you.
But there's no way that other person
in that conversation knows it.
We've seen some manufacturers even
putting little lights on to say,
we'll light the screen when we're in
transparent mode so that people know
that you really are paying attention.
But, that hasn't worked.
So I don't know what going to change it.
One of the interesting ones, and it's
a sort of a side one, I've become
very aware, and since Bluetooth LE
audio has come out, That's the new
Bluetooth standard, which slowly
going to take over the way that we
listen to audio using Bluetooth.
It's much, much more flexible.
It lets you share music with other people.
has lots of great things in it,
and it's also designed to be low
power, so it's in hearing aids.
And some of the people in the
companies that have got these,
seeing are wearing these now all day.
Because you can use them for your
phone conversations like this.
you can use it for listening at music.
are so lightweight, you barely
know you're wearing them.
Part of me thinks there's a market here
for actually taking those and selling
them as professional office earbuds.
And maybe if that happened, and I
don't think any of these companies are
looking at doing that's a totally new
market, and these aren't companies that
necessarily go out for professional.
Unknown new markets that could
start to change the stigma.
You can't see them being worn.
They work really well.
And one of the fascinating things
coming back is talking to those people.
They say, and actually I
listened to more music.
Now I'm wearing them
because they're there.
And the quality is sufficiently good
that you'll listen to music with them.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: there's
been some other efforts on this.
So there's, GN had quite a nice new norm
campaign, which just, were nicely shot.
They were making the case that
whenever, There's a newspaper
article on hearing aids.
They always dig out some stock image
of a, an old clunky hearing aid.
And which shakes people's expectations
of them when actually they don't
realize how subtle, modern ones are.
So that they took some nice footage and
released an open source image library of,
aspirational people wearing hearing aids.
modern contemporary, hearing aids.
And then another one you put me on to was,
Deaf Metal, which is such a great name.
Do you want to talk about that?
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307:
It's a company that's, and they're
not the only one that are trying
to make hearing aids as jewelry.
It's
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: aids, right?
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: for
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: Yeah.
Yeah.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: there
is also a company that is trying to
make a hearing aid within jewellery.
So that the whole thing
is the hearing aid.
There's lots of fascinating
little hearing aid companies out
there doing special aid niches.
a number of them have moved to
cochlear implants, those need
a little sound transmitter.
The cochlear implant is an actual implant
that is surgically inserted in the ear
when you have extreme hearing loss.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: Oh, wow.
Okay.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: excited
with generally a sensor that's put in the
skull and then you have a sound processor
that provides Bluetooth link to that.
And then.
excites the nerves through
the cochlear implant.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307:
Proper cyborg territory.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307:
it is and it's amazing.
it's fascinating technology
that's out there.
and yet at the other hand, we
still know remarkably little about
some of the processes of hearing
loss, and how the ear works.
and we see that not just in
terms of, classical hearing
loss where you lose the hearing.
we have it with tinnitus as to what
causes that and how to affect it.
the growing issue that people are
saying that you can't differentiate
voices in conversations.
and that appears almost to be a
brain learning one of brain no
longer distinguishing between the
multiple signals that are coming back.
and there's concerns as to whether that
may be a result again of just having
something in your ear too long and you
no longer start to hear the cacophony
of sound around you and actually
lose some of your ability to process.
Compared to most of our other
sensors, hearing is still
one of the lesser known ones.
But yes, coming back, there are people
that are looking at accessories to
try and make these things better.
For kids, there are wonderful colors
you can get on their hearing aids.
They really like them.
us adults that are saying, Oh no,
that makes me look like some grumpy
old man if I wear one of those.
I'm not going to do that.
Which is
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: Yeah.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307:
a stupid attitude, but we do it.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: Yeah.
let's come back to, Apple and getting more
hearing aids into people's ears earlier.
Apple have, launched the iPod Pro 2,
which has been certified by the FDA as
some kind of hearing augmentation device.
And interestingly, they've also,
introduced a sort of hearing test,
on the phone And they've introduced
a bunch of technologies there, which
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307:
could help people with
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: one could help
people with mild hearing loss, maybe.
It's not a full on
really good hearing aid.
And it could potentially
democratize or make
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: make
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307:
tests a lot more accessible.
what do you make of those developments?
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307:
lot more accessible.
So what do you make of those developments?
open up what they call the Listen
Now app on it, where you can
just use your smartphone, your
Apple phone, as a microphone.
if you're having a conversation
with somebody, just pop
it down in front of them.
It picks up their voice and that
transmits it to your earpods.
And it's a really neat way, if you've
got mild hearing loss, of helping to
pick up somebody's having hearing it on.
that was excellent.
And they've now gone, added in, a hearing
test, so you pop your AirPod Pro 2s in, it
runs through fairly decent hearing tests,
produces an audiogram, will then allow you
to set up those AirPod to effectively act
as a hearing aid, augmenting your hearing.
I think the most important thing
about it is it moves the stigma of
having to go and book a hearing test.
You can just try it in the comfort
of your room, and I'm sure a lot of
people will do it just because you can.
And a significant number of those are
probably going to do it and discover
that they have got a hearing problem.
To me, that's the most important thing
that's going to come out of this.
whether they then continue to use, their
existing ear pods because it's mild,
or whether they decide they need to
go and have a proper hearing test and
maybe get a more competent hearing aid.
Because hearing loss is a spectrum, we're
born with more or less perfect hearing
and it gets worse after that being the
perverse creatures We are we do our best
to try and see how much of it we can
destroy as quickly as we can by Going
off to discos and listening to loud music
and using power tools and all of the rest
of So finding out you've got a problem
is the first and most important step.
and hopefully that's going to persuade
people, to do safer listening, which
may well be in the works, hobbies,
lifestyle, whatever, also to think
about where they need to be on the step
of gradually moving from earbuds aids.
And I think if that happens, Apple
has done a great service to the world.
it will probably increase
sales of hearing aids.
and it's one of those fascinating ones
that I see a lot of analysts saying, Oh,
this will kill the hearing aid companies.
And I rather suspect the hearing
aid companies are thinking, No,
this is going to increase our sales.
we still have this gap in the
middle of moderate hearing loss,
which the Apple devices are
unlikely to be able to correct.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307:
Oh really, why not?
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: I think
because you're beginning to get to the
point where you want an audiologist to
get involved and you want to be able
to find out exactly what it is that's
going wrong exactly what needs to be
done, to cope without moving into that
where you may actually be exacerbating
the problem rather than improving it.
and there's a lot of work that
hearing aid companies do to try and
understand the causes of hearing loss
and what needs to be done to adjust
that without more hearing loss.
And I think there's a grey area in
the middle where we need a lot more
research as we get more and more
people with moderate hearing loss
starting to sign up to hearing aids.
Quite serious, Eric.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307:
Because I guess it's more
challenging because if you've got
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: a way,
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: quite serious
hearing loss, you're just trying to
get amplify what's coming in, whereas
if it's mild, you can probably pick
up certain frequencies naturally, but
you need other frequencies boosting.
Is that right?
So you've got to let some through
and some, to be amplified.
Yeah.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: Going
to an optician to get glasses and
just getting a cheap pair of reading
glasses for a dollar from your
local pound store or dollar shop.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: Yeah.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: There
are points where you need a better
understanding of what it actually is
if you want to do something about it.
That may in time be something that
goes into AirPods or any other
consumer product, but at the moment
that's an industry that's Likes
go fast to stripes and tick boxes.
So they're all saying, Oh, let's have
lossless codex and let's have spatial
hearing and multidimensional sound.
even though you're never going
to hear any of these if you're
listening in sort of anything other
than perfect listening conditions.
the other aspect of course is
with Once you're into moderate
hearing loss, you need something
that's got an all day battery life.
which isn't something that's very
high on the list of requirements
for most consumer products.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: Let's come back
to some of the tech developments then.
So you've mentioned Bluetooth LE,
which I think you had some part in.
could you just talk a
little bit more about that?
You've already said that it operates on
much lower power, but I think there's
some other benefits to that standard.
So do you want to talk a
little bit more about that?
Sure.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: There's
quite a lot of benefits, so I was
fortunate enough to give him the
chance to chair the working groups
that develop their specifications.
The existing Bluetooth audio
standards have done really well.
have billions of devices shipped
each year that use two different
Bluetooth audio standards.
One is called the hands free profile or
HFP, and that's used just for telephony.
So that sends voice to your earbuds and
takes your voice back for the phone call.
So can use that whenever we're having
these conversations And then we have
the second one, which is for music
streaming, which is called A2DP, or
Advanced Audio Distribution Profile.
and that basically streams
stereo music to your speakers,
headphones, or hearing aids.
But it's one way streaming.
Since they were written, uh Audio
has developed a lot, we have far
more audio capabilities, as well as
telephony, we have voice over IP,
lots of other ways of doing things.
And for music streaming, we
stream from different devices.
We also want to talk to Siri to tell it
to change music, which you can't easily
do because A2DP is one way, and we may
want to mix and match lots of different
things during the course of the day.
If you go from listening to your
television, to answering a phone
call, to having a conversation
like this, really difficult to do
it with the existing standards.
we started off saying we want to
make a really versatile toolbox
that will do any type of audio.
We can have any number of audio
streams going from a source device,
whether that's voice or music, to the
sync device, which is your earbuds,
your hearables, speakers, whatever.
And you can have the
streams going the other way.
And if you want, you can actually
mix and match, you could be talking
to one Siri device while your
television is streaming music to you.
we initially thought, can we build
this on the existing framework?
And we rapidly came to the conclusion
that this actually needs to start
afresh from a new blank piece of paper,
if we're going to do it properly.
Which is what we did.
And we've come up with a set
of standards called Bluetooth.
audio.
key part of them is we
have a brand new codec.
It's a much more efficient codec.
It's much higher quality.
And unlike our previous codecs,
the same codec works for both
voice and for high quality music.
it uses about half the bandwidth
that existing codecs did, to
give you the same audio quality.
that's all in, but the other
really interesting one is we've
added a broadcast capability.
And what that means is that multiple
people can listen to a single source
of music, or a single source of audio.
that may be in your TV, that if
you're sitting around, everybody
can listen to the TV using their
own earbuds or hearing aids.
You can have multiple different streams
in it, so your TV today, if you're
streaming with Amazon, you can go and
look in the languages and you'll see
that there are some what are called
dialogue boosted versions, which
have been mixed to make the sound
easier for people with hearing loss.
And typically, that's done in the
cinema today, most cinemas have telecoil
which provide a broadcast capability.
And the sound that's fed to that from
your film typically has the background
noise and the background music reduced,
and the dialogue volume increased
so that it's easier to pick it out.
But now it's going to be possible to
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: I'm sorry,
just to be clear, those coils that people
with hearing aids can pick it up, right?
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307:
people with hearing aids.
So part, the broadcast development
we've got here was really looking
at the evolution of telecoil.
this is now something that will be
used in place of telecoil for people,
that are wearing hearing aids.
But it's equally available to
everybody that's wearing hearing aids.
a new Bluetooth LE audio, pair of
headphones, hearing aids, whatever.
We can stream multiple
different audio streams.
if you're watching a film, you
can have multiple different
soundtracks being transmitted.
And you can just select, do I want
this in the original language,
or do I want it in English, or
do I want it in something else.
If you've got hearing loss, you
could say, I would like to have
the audio enhanced version of it.
And there is very low latency.
One issue if you have traditional
Bluetooth the latency,
particularly if you're streaming
from a TV, is really poor.
It's about 200 milliseconds
and you have a lip sync issue.
You can see it's not right.
We've pulled the latency down now.
you can get it down to about
to 30 milliseconds, really
can't distinguish that.
And it means this is really
good in a live environment.
I've been at a number of concerts,
where we've had demos of this being
done, where it's being broadcast.
So anybody with hearing aids in the
audience that support this can hear it.
And you realize that if you
can hear both the ambient.
And also the transmitted version.
And I was at a fascinating large scale
work in New York, and the composer who I
knew was there, and he was saying, what
I'm hearing through the broadcast actually
what's written on the page of the score,
and what I'm hitting in the auditorium
is what was in my head when I was
writing it, but which is the right one?
It's been fascinating.
The whole of the broadcast
is branded as AuraCast.
And you can use it so you can share
music from your phone with your friends.
But it also means there's
lots of public things.
So if you're at a bus shelter,
you could just tap on your phone
and say, are the next buses?
And it would tell you.
in whichever languages it supports.
for voice, the bandwidth
is sufficiently low.
You could probably support a
dozen different languages just
off one little Bluetooth chip.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: getting away
from the kind of hearing loss use cases.
that wasn't one for, but, you
mentioned, you could switch between
your phone to TV to your smart
speaker and Siri or whatever.
How do you do that switching?
Is that going to be done on the
devices you're connecting with or are
we moving towards voice control where
you could just speak to your hearables
and say switch to TV or something?
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: There's
lots of different ways to do it.
So we've tried to make this
as flexible as possible.
you can certainly do it by
having buttons on your, headset.
On speakers, we, at least one speaker
manufacturer where you've now got an
interface on the speaker and it will show
you all the different streams it knows
about and you just say play that one.
on hearing aids, on earbuds, you're
unlikely to have buttons because there's
just not much room for a user interface.
So you can certainly do that
with, an app on the phone.
we have the ability, you can
just take your phone, scan a QR
code that might be on your TV.
If you walk into a
theatre, a code on that.
you buy a theatre ticket, you can
have that already built into the
theatre ticket that's downloaded to
your phone so that it knows as you
walk in what it needs to connect to.
we'll support NFC if you want
to, so something that taps.
you can have little remote controls.
that, today if you have a hearing
aid, people typically buy a remote
control for changing the volume.
can use that will allow
you to change, this.
You can build it into a smartwatch,
so you can have a control on
your smartwatch, again, just tap
your smartwatch against a reader.
the spec allows this sort of third
device, whether it's just a simple
wearable wristband, whether it's a
smartphone or another device, that
can do all of the work for you.
And it then tells your hearing aids or
your earbuds, go and listen to that.
this third device never ever receives
the audio, but it can detect what is
around, what's available, and then
tell your hearing aids or your devices
that are rendering the audio to go
and latch on to that particular one.
If you walk into the room with your own TV
in, that TV can notice that you're there
and say, do you want to listen to me?
And that could just be a tap
and yes, I do or no, I don't.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: what do you,
see the impact of AI in the near future?
And do you think voice control where
you could actually just Talk to your
hearables, just like you talk to a,
a chat bot or a Siri or whatever.
do you think that's going to be an option?
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: You
can certainly talk to your hearables
in terms of doing simple things.
today, if you are using Siri or most
other voice assistants, the first
bit of voice recognition is on your
earbuds, where it generally is just
looking for a single wake word.
That's it.
so it's looking for you to say Alexa
or Siri or whatever you've chosen.
it will then connect up to your phone,
which will connect up to the cloud,
and the rest of the voice recognition
will generally take place in the cloud.
There's no reason why you can't
migrate some of that, at least for
standard enquiries that you might
know, such as connecting to what's
around you, that can't be done locally.
generally you will want to do it
in a device that's got a bigger
battery because that sort of work
takes a fair bit of power and you
don't want your earbuds to do it.
this is one also thing we've done
with LE Audio is it's very asymmetric.
If I'm streaming from my phone, my
phone's doing all the hard work.
so we try to offload as much as possible.
If you're wearing headband,
earphones, you've got room for bigger
batteries, you can move more of
the processing up to the edge and
actually have it happening in the ear.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: I was
more thinking it'd be connected to
your phone, but you wouldn't have to
get your phone out of your pocket to
switch the audio source, for example.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: one
of the fascinating things that we're
going to see is you can spend more
time with your phone in the pocket.
one of the interesting applications that
I've seen people working on is looking
at using LE audio to provide a voice.
to augmented reality.
as you're walking down the street,
it's talking in your ear to say, look,
you need to turn left at the next one.
You can use the phone, which knows where
it is, what you're doing, what's around
you, basically whisper in your ear.
And it may do that over and above, mixed
in with whatever you're listening to.
It's intriguing how voice is
coming back because everything
our phones did used to be voice.
We made voice calls and that was it.
And then when Spotify came along,
really, that was the point that we
saw the growth in and then in earbuds.
We stopped talking to people and
we just started listening to stuff.
With voice assistants and also with
podcasts, we started moving back to voice.
And we're beginning to see people
the approach that if you're looking
at augmented reality as you're
walking along don't need to start
transmitting video onto your glasses.
A lot of the time you can just
have something talk to you.
And those little voice prompts work really
well if you're looking at hearables.
As you walk along, it's just what you do.
When you're on a bus, the bus telling you
when you need to get off at the next stop.
And the things that you use to take
your phone out of your pocket to
check, you no longer need to do it.
It takes away an awful lot of what you
do with a smartwatch as well, of why
do you need to look at a smartwatch
if it just tells you what you need
to know when you need to know.
And, that's the important bit
of telling you what you need to
know and when you need to know,
getting that what and when right.
And that's down to the AI and
the user experience designers.
And.
Not quite sure that we've
got user experience and AI
tying in together too well.
We've seen some of the products,
like the human pin, the AI,
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: Yeah.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: to
replace a phone that are beginning
to poke a bit at the boundaries, to
say, this is where things could go.
None of them have got it right.
anywhere near right enough, but
it's making the point that there is
a future past this little slab of
glass that we carry around with us.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: Yeah.
And just, other sort of
more subtle, benefits of AI.
Presumably, AI could be used to just
auto detect your audio environments
and personalize, your sort of listening
experience depending on where you are.
Fascinating.
Fascinating.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: I
personally think if you look at the
hearing aids, they have got one of the
best implementations of AI that I've seen
in any product so far, because I look at
most AI and I think This isn't actually
much more than the control engineering
that was being taught in the 1950s.
it isn't, intelligent.
It's just making some really basic
decisions . It will get better, but
there are hearing aids out there from
a couple of brands that have some quite
convincing AI that is doing exactly what
you described and working out where are
you And deciding how the device needs to
operate, both in that environment and with
your particular aspects of hearing loss.
And it's fascinating that, as you
said, you were surprised how much tech
is in hearing aids and how far ahead
they are of a lot of the industry.
the AI in hearing aids is way ahead of
the AI in most consumer electronics.
You mentioned the ears,
the types of how much you
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: let's
move on to the health monitoring
capabilities or potential ones that we.
mentioned briefly at the top.
but you mentioned that, that the wrist
is a pretty suboptimal place to put,
sensors ears, I've got advantages
and could you just talk about the
types of health markers you might be
able to pick up or can pick up, in
the air and how you see that moving,
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307:
most of what you pick up through
that typically are on the wrist,
you can pick up through your ear.
almost any sensor that isn't
invasive, so I don't think you
can do blood sugar in the ear.
it's an ideal spot for temperature,
we've had ear thermometers from
way, way back, it's a surprisingly
good one for blood pressure.
There are a number of
different techniques out there.
Again, there used to be devices,
back sort of 100 years back,
where people would measure blood
temperature through the year.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: right.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: ever became
very successful commercially, because
we're incredibly fragile, but they work.
There's a surprisingly thin
barrier through the year.
to.
look at anything in terms of blood.
So again, SpO2, oxygen content,
much easier to pick up.
it's a nice humid environment with
sort of blood flow and everything
else quite close behind it.
and that's why it's so good as a site.
But the secondary benefit, because
you've got your semicircular canals
there, which is what you use to keep you
stable, is it's an incredibly stable one.
You don't move your head around very much.
So those sensors can all be put in.
Now, there is the issue of making them
small enough ensuring that they stay in
contact because with the wrist, you've got
an elastic band that holds it in place.
you can't quite do that in the ear.
And if you try and do it by shoving
stuff in the ear, it blocks the
ear so you can't hear anything.
So there are practical issues
that need to be looked at.
By putting something in both ears,
you've got the opportunity to
start to do ECGs, and there's a few
people that have put ECGs out there.
And if you really want to wear
wristbands as well, you've then
got four points to play with.
So, these things are all happening
at small scales from people that
are just with what you can do.
But the great thing about this, and you
talked early on about all the Fitbits
and the other things, which used once,
and once the battery's died it goes
into the back of the bedroom drawer.
Is, with earbuds, you buy
them predominantly to listen
to music, or conversation.
Which means you keep on
putting them back in your ear.
And that's where hearables really
have a win, in terms of biometric
sensor, that you're not putting
them on to measure your biometrics.
You're putting them on because
you want to listen to music.
And as a by product, you're
getting the biometric stream out.
That's where you then hit this unfortunate
dichotomy of the people that want
to sell you earbuds, have absolutely
no interest, generally, in pulling
back any biometric data from you.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307:
Apart from Apple, right?
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307:
from Apple, is why Apple is such
an interesting company in this
space because it has the features
that could make it absolute winner.
Assuming there is a prize to be won
here, this is the one where we keep
on saying there's got to be value in
that data, please, if there is value in
that data, Apple should be the winner,
it's a market they're interested in.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: I remember
seeing a patent registration.
on some Mac site for health sensors
in an AirPods years ago, so that
I'm sure they're interested.
I'm just, I'm interested why
it hasn't happened sooner.
is it about getting the sensors
down to the right size and cost?
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307:
we're getting there.
There are already devices.
there's a couple of companies that have
been doing, earbuds for runners, which are
looking predominantly at the pulse and VO
and saying, we'll look at this and we will
then choose the music for you to run to or
change the pace, the tempo of the music,
to try and increase your running rate.
and that's a very Simple closed loop
thing, which is already using those.
So the sensors are small enough to go in.
there are companies out there that are
making them and desperately trying to
get earbud manufacturers to put them in.
It's turning that into that
compelling feedback that makes
people sign subscriptions.
and that is where we see this
issue that most hardware vendors
aren't into that business of as a
service with a monthly subscription.
Apple, if anybody could do it.
and as I said before, I, we've seen signs
in the past that they're interested in
doing it and then much has come of it.
I don't know.
And it's a company, it's difficult
to tell where it's going.
It has a very, efficient business
model for what it does, in terms of
selling hardware and in licensing apps.
does it want to get into
data and health management?
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307:
they certainly said they did.
That was the big push, wasn't it?
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: push,
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307:
four or five years ago.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: they are
also a very competent terms of making
money quite ruthless, as we see with the
car, of just cutting something when it
looks as if it's not going to make money.
And you can't fault them
for any of these decisions.
These are good business decisions.
And a lot of what we're talking about
is a wonderful societal approach if we
can do this and improve people's health.
But it may not necessarily be
one that has a business model.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: that many
people justify the purchase of an Apple
watch on the basis of health benefits.
and that's been, they tried different
routes with the Apple watch before
they, they centered around the health
benefits, and that's worked well for them.
So I dunno, it seems like
a natural extension to me.
I don't quite understand.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307:
And you see it as well.
in the States, I know a number of
companies that effectively have
incentive schemes for your employees.
If you show that you are regularly doing
the 10, 000 steps a day, which has very
little medical background, a lot of
marketing background as to why it was
10, 000, you will get various benefits.
so yes, it is a tool that's being
used, but in those cases, what's
interesting, it's actually another
company that's employing people.
That is using it as the carrot.
it's not Apple that is
making the money out of that.
Apple are selling the hardware and making
the money out of the hardware sale.
I'm, it's fascinating
where it will go and.
I don't know, but Apple has the scale
to do it, if it wants to do it, and if
it thinks it can make money out of it.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: Absolutely.
Now, just before we wrap up, do you
see any other wider implications of the
kind of innovations in the future you've
mapped out for hearables just in the way
we use our wider technology ecosystems?
you've already mentioned,
going to concerts and
theatres, connecting with that.
you've mentioned about
seeing the switching between
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: also
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: say,
smart speakers and phones and TVs.
I'm guessing also cars and things like
that, but any other thoughts about
how you see here, changing the way we
operate our wider ecosystem of tech?
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307:
I think hearables have a
number of fascinating aspects.
an excellent site for biometric
monitors, and I think that will happen
as people realize you can do it.
What happens to that data, I don't know,
but that is we've just discussed, the
bigger concern, can pull lots of data back
from people, but what happens with it?
unless you can provide a compelling
application that results in some degree
of compliance that makes people look
after themselves, then it's just a set of
numbers for the sake of a set of numbers.
and that's it.
That's a societal attitude towards
healthcare, which tech would dearly
love to solve, but I'm not sure it will.
we need some other changes within that.
I think one of the things that is
interesting and we've touched on is
are being used more for voice they
have been for quite a long time.
we see this in, say, in
people listening to podcasts.
starting, I think, to see A bit
more voice interaction happening.
And one thing with earbuds,
headphones, they have shut people
off from the outside world.
beginning to see a few things
happening where looking at seeing
how we might be able to use hearables
to actually bring back conversation.
of making it easier to talk in possibly
noisy spaces, for looking at small
groups that are talking together in
maybe a more distributed environment.
And I think that's going to be interesting
because, telephony historically has
been a one to one, listening has got rid
of that and just say, no we listen to
content that's already been provided.
would be nice to see us going
back to being more social and has
done an efficient job of trying
to remove that and put in sort of
false social networks in its place.
So I don't know how that will happen.
I do think what hearables will do,
particularly as we talk about that
whisper in your ear and little bits
of information when you need it, is we
will lessen the amount of time we want
to spend with our phones, that we will
still need the global connectivity to a
degree that still needs something with
a decent battery and to have enough
life and be able to get the range.
But I think it's going to be
something that we concentrate
on less than we do today.
It's just something that's there and we
vocalize what we want and then it happens.
and that's just pulling in what we
have with voice recognition, putting
in Sensible AI, where more of that
will actually be done at the edge in
terms of recognizing what we want.
at better ways we deal with it.
One of the fascinating things going around
at the moment looking at codec technology.
a realization that most codecs
that we use for voice aren't
particularly good at conveying
the underlying emotions in voice.
And we're seeing people looking
at how do you bring that back in.
And once you know how you bring
it back in, you then have a
better idea of how do you.
actually use those emotions in
other things that you're doing.
So I think with all of the concentration
on music and trying to make music
sound better, we're now beginning to
realize that we don't actually know
as much about voice as we should.
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: Interesting.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307:
a move back to saying, do we
understand what we're talking about?
And that could fuel a whole new area
of what we do, which is it's going
to be fascinating and will very much
help with the Edge AI processing
we start to concentrate on, not
just can I understand the words,
but can I understand the meaning.
More
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307: Indeed.
fascinating conversation, Nick, as always.
my takeaway really is that it's just
underlined to me that I think Hearables
has got a much more promising future, I
personally think, than all the hype around
smart glasses and AR and VR, to be honest.
I think it's going to be much more, widely
easier to integrate
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307: into,
kevin_1_02-18-2025_093307:
normal human activity.
I think it can weave itself
into so many different use cases
in a subtle and useful way.
So that's my big takeaway
from this conversation.
but thanks very much for coming on.
nick-hunn_1_02-18-2025_093307:
Thank you very much for having me.
one point to just say, Hearables has been
fastest growing consumer product ever.
So it's something that people want.
And I think the challenge now is
to see what else we can do with it.
But thank you so much.
As always, it's great talking to you.
