Today, I did some research into hearing aid companies. There are sooooo many of them around…
However, I was surprised to find out that the global market is basically dominated by a few European players who own a lot of those smaller companies you may have heard of or know about.
I found the following two illustrations very helpful.
Provided the percentages are still more or less accurate (they seem to refer to a 2019 Statista distribution chart that hasn’t been updated, but is frequently referred to in online articles), the worldwide market leaders in hearing aids are
Sonova from Switzerland as well as the Danish
Demant group with about 30 % market share each, followed by
WS Audiology with headquarters in Denmark and Singapore (the current company was created following the 2019 merger of Sivantos Group, a Siemens spin-off, and Widex ),
GN Store Nord, yet another company group from Denmark, and finally
Starkey from the US. According to this chart, only 1 percent of the pie is left for companies not associated with these Big 5.
Amplifon from Italy is a special case insofar they only “offer state-of-the art hearing aids from other well-known brand manufacturers”, some of them rebranded under the Ampli brand, the way I understand it.
While also featured in the Hearing Industry Map 2022, US companies HLT (Hearing Lab Technology) and Intricon (a micro medical device manufacturer developing affordable self-fitting OTC hearing aids) are not as influential, but apparently fast-growing. Then, there are quite a few single brand companies such as Orka or Cochlear (who are in the cochlear implant business, not in the hearing aid business). As well as partnerships like that of Lexie hearing aids powered by Bose.
So strikingly, three company groups, all from Denmark, dominate almost two thirds of the global hearing aid market! I wonder whether there is possibly any connection to the recent buying-the-dip by SEB (Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB) that is headquartered in Stockholm but has institutional clients in all of Scandinavia, the Baltic countries, Germany and the UK… (see my recent post in the ‘Institutional Ownership’ thread).
On the other hand, Cochlear would make an excellent customer for Brainchip, too, as some of you have already pointed out. The article about their collaboration with Google and Australian Hearing Hub members that
@davidfitz linked a couple of days ago, reminded me of Nandan Nayampally liking the recent Google Tensor 3 release announcement on LinkedIn.
To be honest, I am a bit surprised no companies from Asia have got a decent market share, yet. Someone was mentioning Sony, and I recall coming across the name of another Japanese company called Rion.
Edit: I just realised Sony shows up in the WS Audiology box…
They entered into a partnership agreement in the OTC self-fitting hearing aid business in Sept 2022.
(January 2023)
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