Starkey has table mic which I think is cheaper. But works only with their aids.
If by similar you mean ‘mic’, then you can ‘compare’ like that.
But when you dig into HOW those mics work, it’s apples and oranges. Or more specifically omnidirectional mic in ‘others’ vs automatically adjustable with focusing on sound source by phonak and starkey. Phonak has 3 mics and forms 6 beams. This video is good and realistic representation how it works. It attenuates but not removes unwanted directions.
Maybe Echo has something equal, I’m not familiar, I don’t want such things in my home, I like my home stupid, but it obviously isn’t that easy for other HA manufacturers to use such tech, I guess a lot of R&D is needed, and I can hardly imagine many companies who have more money for such plays than amazon. So it’s not fair in a sense to compare tech giant with average sized company.
It’s apples and oranges if you compare engineering power of amazon vs sonova or someone else in HA industry. And sonova looks really strong in HA industry.
For example, google supposedly pays around 180-200k CHF in Zürich for newcomer programers (think junior).
Sonova I guess is more aligned with the market and pays 120k for senior programers (think 10 years of experience). I forgot if I saw their salary figures, 120k is the fresh info (from today) from the recruiter in the ZH area.
No amazon there, but TFAANG (tesla, amazon, apple, netflix, google, facebook) are usually similarly competitive on the same market, that’s why I took google salary info in the perspective, since it’s in the same city as Sonova, and they have the tech in question.
So if they can’t pay the same rate, I expect their R&D has to feel that as well.
So from that perspective, I think they (sonova and others) actually did awesome stuff already with such limited funds - of such small customer base where people usually buy new aid every 5 years. Also, don’t forget that around half of the price you pay for your aids isn’t going to the manufacturer, but your fitter.
I saw sonova’s job ad for a position that mentions health monitoring and sensors, so I guess that’s next step for them
R&D focused on implementing better already known stuff is expensive. And playing around with inventing new stuff is even more expensive - mostly because you waste insane amount of time on all ‘not a solution’ versions.
Edit.