The Expanding Market for OTC Consumer Audio Tech

MAR 07, 2023
by Tam Pham
health and wellness Technology

Source: Google Trends

The Signal: 67%-86% of Americans who would benefit from hearing aids aren’t using them — either because of the price or because of the stigma attached to wearing hearing aids. It also takes the typical patient experiencing hearing loss 5-7 years to seek help.

But a long-overdue FDA rule recently created a new category of over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids, allowing adults to buy them directly from retailers without a prescription, medical exam, or audiologist visit. 

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Market Signals

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The signal: As meditation becomes mainstream, people may be surprised to find that searches for sleep apps double their meditation counterpart. As people invest in getting a better night’s rest, there’s opportunity abound, including physical products like weighted blankets or premium PJs, supplements, popular insomnia drugs having their patents expire, companies paying their employees to sleep better, marketing for sleep specialists, or online sleep education (ex: sleep apnea test has 27k searches per month).

The alternative milk market is getting frothy

The signal: As more people wave goodbye to dairy, alternative milk is slowly taking over; it has already cornered 13% of the market. With the exception of soy milk, all of the alt-milks have been on the up, with some of the newer entrants including hemp milk and pea milk. Other alt-products are getting attention, including cashew cheese, with 18100 searches per month.

Capitalizing on the Airpods market, making more money than Shopify

The signal: Since killing the headphone jack, Apple has graced the world with AirPods, which did an estimated 60m units in 2019. That means AirPods alone are bringing in approx ~$10b in revenue, more than Twitter, Shopify, or Spotify, to name a few popular tech giants. Opportunity lies in Apple opening up SiriOS or the wave of iPhone accessories (including cases, cleaning kits, hooks, and keychains) which have shown “hockey stick” growth alongside their hardware predecessor.

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